CHICAGO  POEMS 

CARL  SANDBURG 


• 


ft. 

CHICAGO   POEMS 


By 
CARL  SANDBURG 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 
1916 


COPYRIGHT,  1916 

BY 
HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 

Published  April,  1916 


THI    OUINN    4    MDIN    CO.    PRKS8 
RAHWAY,    N.   J. 


PS3S37 

A  6 1  a- 

65 


MY  WIFE  AND  PAL 
LILLIAN  STEICHEN  SANDBURG 


346463 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

Some  of  these  writings  were  first  printed  in  Poetry: 
A  Magazine  of  Verse,  Chicago.  Permission  to  reprint 
is  by  courtesy  of  that  publication.  The  writer  wishes 
to  thank  Harriet  Monroe  and  Alice  Corbin  Henderson, 
editors  of  Poetry,  and  William  Marion  Reedy,  editor  of 
Reedy  s  Mirror,  St.  Louis,  whose  services  have  height 
ened  what  values  of  human  address  herein  hold  good. 


CONTENTS 

CHICAGO  POEMS 

Chicago   .       .       .       .              ,       .       .       i       .       .       .  3 

Sketch ..;...  5 

Masses    , ...*..       .  6 

Lost         ............  7 

The  Harbor  ...........  8 

They  Will  Say     ...       .       .       *       •  \   •       •       •  9 

Mill-Doors     ...........  10 

Halsted  Street  Car     .       .       .       ....       .       .  n 

Clark  Street  Bridge    .       .       .       .       . "     .       .       .       .  12 

Passers-by      ...       .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .  13 

The  Walking  Man  of  Rodin    .......  14 

Subway    .       .       .              .       .       .       .       .       .       .       .  15 

The  Shovel  Man  ....       ^       .....  16 

A  Teamster's  Farewell     ........  17 

Fish  Crier      .       .       .       .       .       .       «       .       .       .       .  18 

Picnic  Boat   .       .       .       .       .       .       ,       ....  19 

Happiness      .    •  .       .       .....       .       .       .       .  20 

Muckers  .       ...       .       .       .       «              .       .       .  21 

Blacklisted     .       .       .'      .       ..».;.       .       .  22 

Graceland 23 

Child  of  the  Romans  .       .       .      •* 24 

The  Right  to  Grief     .       <      . 25 

Mag 27 

Onion  Days 28 

Population  Drifts 30 

Cripple 31 

A  Fence 32 

Anna  Imroth 33 

Working  Girls 34 

vii 


viii  Contents 

Mamie 35 

Personality 36 

Cumulatives 37 

To  Certain  Journeymen 38 

Chamfort 39 

Limited 40 

The  Has-Been 41 

In  a  Back  Alley 42 

A  Coin -43 

Dynamiter 44 

Ice  Handler 45 

Jack .46 

Fellow  Citizens 47 

Nigger 49 

Two  Neighbors    ....  - 50 

Style 5i 

To    Beachey — 1912 52 

Under  a  Hat  Rim 53 

In  a  Breath 54 

Bath 55 

Bronzes 56 

Dunes 58 

On  the  Way 59 

Ready  to  Kill 60 

To  a  Contemporary  Bunkshooter 61 

Skyscraper 65 

HANDFULS 

Fog 71 

Pool .  72 

Jan  Kubelik 73 

Choose 74 

Crimson 75 

Whitelight 76 

Flux 77 

Kin 78 


Contents 


IX 


White  Shoulders 79 

Losses 80 

Troths 81 

WAR  POEMS  (1914-1915) 

Killers .       .  85 

Among  the  Red  Guns 87 

Iron 88 

Murmurings  in  a  Field  Hospital 89 

Statistics 90 

Fight 91 

Buttons 92 

And  They  Obey 93 

Jaws 94 

Salvage 95 

Wars 96 

THE  ROAD  AND  THE  END 

The  Road  and  the  End 99 

Choices 100 

Graves 101 

Aztec  Mask 102 

Momus 103 

The  Answer 105 

To  a  Dead  Man 107 

Under 108 

A  Sphinx 109 

Who  Am  I?  .       . no 

Our  Prayer  of  Thanks in 

FOGS  AND  FIRES 

At  a  Window US 

Under  the  Harvest  Moon 116 

The  Great  Hunt 117 

Monotone 118 

Joy 119 


x  Contents 

Shirt 120 

Aztec 121 

Two 122 

Back  Yard 123 

On  the  Breakwater 124 

Mask 125 

Pearl  Fog 126 

I  Sang 127 

Follies 128 

June 129 

Nocturne  in  a  Deserted  Brickyard 130 

Hydrangeas 131 

Theme  in  Yellow 132 

Between  Two  Hills 133 

Last    Answers      .       .       .       . , 134 

Window 135 

Young  Sea 136 

Bones 138 

Pals 139 

Child 140 

Poppies 141 

Child  Moon 142 

Margaret 143 

SHADOWS 

Poems  Done  on  a  Late  Night  Car 147 

It  Is  Much 150 

Trafficker 151 

Harrison  Street  Court 152 

Soiled  Dove 153 

Jungheimer's 154 

Gone 155 

OTHER  DAYS  (19001910) 

Dreams  in  the  Dusk 159 

Docks  1 60 


Contents  xi 

All  Day  Long 161 

Waiting 162 

From  the  Shore 163 

Uplands  in  May 164 

A  Dream  Girl 165 

The  Plowboy 166 

Broadway                             . 167 

Old  Woman          .       .       .       » 168 

The  Noon  Hour  .       „      .       .       , 169 

'Boes        .       .       .       .       •       .       . 170 

Under  a  Telephone  Pole   . 171 

I  Am  the  People,  the  Mob      . 172 

Government   .       .       «       .       •       , 173 

Languages      .       .'...'•' 175 

Letters  to   Dead   Imagists      .              176 

Sheep 177 

The  Red  Son  .       .      .       .       .      .       .       .       .       .  178 

The  Mist       .       .       .      .      , 180 

The  Junk  Man      .       ,       .       , 181 

Silver  Nails 182 

Gypsy      .       .       ...      .      , 183 


CHICAGO    POEMS 


CHICAGO 

HOG  Butcher  for  the  World, 

Tool  Maker,  Stacker  of  Wheat, 

Player  with  Railroads  and  the  Nation's  Freight 

Handler ; 

Stormy,  husky,  brawling, 
City  of  the  Big  Shoulders : 

They  tell  me  you  are  wicked  and  I  believe  them,  for  I 

have  seen  your  painted  women  under  the  gas  lamps 

luring  the  farm  boys. 
And  they  tell  me  you  are  crooked  and  I  answer :  Yes,  it 

is  true  I  have  seen  the  gunman  kilt  and  go  free  to 

kill  again. 
And  they  tell  me  you  are  brutal  and  my  reply  is :  On  the 

faces  of  women  and  children  I  have  seen  the  marks 

of  wanton  hunger. 
And  having  answered  so  I  turn  once  more  to  those  who 

sneer  at  this  my  city,  and  I  give  them  back  the  sneer 

and  say  to  them : 
Come  and  show  me  another  city  with  lifted  head  singing 

so  proud  to  be  alive  and  coarse  and  strong  and  cun 
ning. 
Flinging  magnetic  curses  amid  the  toil  of  piling  job  on 

job,  here  is  a  tall  bold  slugger  set  vivid  against  the 

little  soft  cities; 

3 


4  Chicago  Poems 

Fierce  as  a  dog  with  tongue  lapping  for  action,  cunning 
as  a  savage  pitted  against  the  wilderness, 
Bareheaded, 
Shoveling, 
Wrecking, 
Planning, 

Building,  breaking,  rebuilding, 
Under  the  smoke,  dust  all  over  his  mouth,  laughing  with 

white  teeth, 
Under  the  terrible  burden  of  destiny  laughing  as  a  young 

man  laughs, 
Laughing  even  as  an  ignorant  fighter  laughs  who  has 

never  lost  a  battle, 

Bragging  and  laughing  that  under  his  wrist  is  the  pulse, 
and  under  his  ribs  the  heart  of  the  people, 

Laughing ! 

Laughing  the  stormy,  husky,  brawling  laughter  of 
Youth,  half-naked,  sweating,  proud  to  be  Hog 
Butcher,  Tool  Maker,  Stacker  of  Wheat,  Player  with 
Railroads  and  Freight  Handler  to  the  Nation. 


SKETCH 

THE  shadows  of  the  ships 

Rock  on  the  crest 

In  the  low  blue  lustre 

Of  the  tardy  and  the  soft  inrolling  tide. 

A  long  brown  bar  at  the  dip  of  the  sky 
Puts  an  arm  of  sand  in  the  span  of  salt. 

The  lucid  and  endless  wrinkles 

Draw  in,  lapse  and  withdraw. 

Wavelets  crumble  and  white  spent  bubbles 

Wash  on  the  floor  of  the  beach. 

Rocking  on  the  crest 

In  the  low  blue  lustre 

Are  the  shadows  of  the  ships. 


MASSES 

AMONG  the  mountains  I  wandered  and  saw  blue  haze  and 
red  crag  and  was  amazed; 

On  the  beach  where  the  long  push  under  the  endless  tide 
maneuvers,  I  stood  silent; 

Under  the  stars  on  the  prairie  watching  the  Dipper  slant 
over  the  horizon's  grass,  I  was  full  of  thoughts. 

Great  men,  pageants  of  war  and  labor,  soldiers  and  work 
ers,  mothers  lifting  their  children — these  all  I 
touched,  and  felt  the  solemn  thrill  of  them. 

And  then  one  day  I  got  a  true  look  at  the  Poor,  millions 
of  the  Poor,  patient  and  toiling;  more  patient  than 
crags,  tides,  and  stars ;  innumerable,  patient  as  the 
darkness  of  night — and  all  broken,  humble  ruins  of 
nations. 


LOST 

DESOLATE  and  lone 

All  night  long  on  the  lake 

Where  fog  trails  and  mist  creeps, 

The  whistle  of  a  boat 

Calls  and  cries  unendingly, 

Like  some  lost  child 

In  tears  and  trouble 

Hunting  the  harbor's  breast 

And  the  harbor's  eyes. 


THE   HARBOR 

PASSING  through  huddled  and  ugly  walls 

By  doorways  where  women 

Looked  from  their  hunger-deep  eyes, 

Haunted  with  shadows  of  hunger-hands, 

Out  from  the  huddled  and  ugly  walls, 

I  came  sudden,  at  the  city's  edge, 

On  a  blue  burst  of  lake, 

Long  lake  waves  breaking  under  the  sun 

On  a  spray-flung  curve  of  shore ; 

And  a  fluttering  storm  of  gulls, 

Masses  of  great  gray  wings 

And  flying  white  bellies 

Veering  and  wheeling  free  in  the  open. 


THEY  WILL   SAY 

OF  my  city  the  worst  that  men  will  ever  say  is  this : 
You  took  little  children  away  from  the  sun  and  the  dew, 
And  the  glimmers  that  played  in  the  grass  under  the 

great  sky, 

And  the  reckless  rain ;  you  put  them  between  walls 
To  work,  broken  and  smothered,  for  bread  and  wages, 
To  eat  dust  in  their  throats  and  die  empty-hearted 
For  a  little  handful  of  pay  on  a  few  Saturday  nights. 


MILL-DOORS 

You  never  come  back. 

I  say  good-by  when  I  see  you  going  in  the  doors, 
The  hopeless  open  doors  that  call  and  wait 
And  take  you  then  for — how  many  cents  a  day? 
How  many  cents  for  the  sleepy  eyes  and  fingers? 

I  say  good-by  because  I  know  they  tap  your  wrists, 
In  the  dark,  in  the  silence,  day  by  day, 
And  all  the  blood  of  you  drop  by  drop, 
And  you  are  old  before  you  are  young. 
You  never  come  back. 


10 


HALSTED    STREET   CAR 

COME  you,  cartoonists, 
Hang  on  a  strap  with  me  here 
At  seven  o'clock  in  the  morning 
On  a  Halsted  street  car. 

Take  your  pencils 
And  draw  these  faces. 

Try  with  your  pencils  for  these  crooked  faces, 
That  pig-sticker  in  one  corner — his  mouth — 
That  overall  factory  girl — her  loose  cheeks. 

Find  for  your  pencils 

A  way  to  mark  your  memory 

Of  tired  empty  faces. 

After  their  night's  sleep, 
In  the  moist  dawn 
And  cool  daybreak, 

Faces 

Tired  of  wishes, 
Empty  of  dreams. 


ii 


CLARK   STREET   BRIDGE 

DUST  of  the  feet 
And  dust  of  the  wheels, 
Wagons  and  people  going, 
All  day  feet  and  wheels. 

Now.     .     . 

.     .     Only  stars  and  mist 
A  lonely  policeman, 
Two  cabaret  dancers, 
Stars  and  mist  again, 
No  more  feet  or  wheels, 
No  more  dust  and  wagons. 

Voices  of  dollars 
And  drops  of  blood 

Voices  of  broken  hearts, 
.     .     Voices  singing,  singing, 
.     .     Silver  voices,  singing, 
Softer  than  the  stars, 
Softer  than  the  mist. 


12 


PASSERS-BY 

PASSERS-BY, 

Out  of  your  many  faces 

Flash  memories  to  me 

Now  at  the  day  end 

Away  from  the  sidewalks 

Where  your  shoe  soles  traveled 

And  your  voices  rose  and  blent 

To  form  the  city's  afternoon  roar 

Hindering  an  old  silence. 

Passers-by, 

I  remember  lean  ones  among  you, 
Throats  in  the  clutch  of  a  hope, 
J^ips  written  over  with  strivings, 
Mouths  that  kiss  only  for  love, 
Records  of  great  wishes  slept  with, 

Held  long 
And  prayed  and  toiled  for : 

Yes, 

Written  on 
Your  mouths 
And  your  throats 
I  read  them 
When  you  passed  by. 
13 


THE   WALKING   MAN   OF   RODIN 

LEGS  hold  a  torso  away  from  the  earth. 

And  a  regular  high  poem  of  legs  is  here. 

Powers  of  bone  and  cord  raise  a  belly  and  lungs 

Out  of  ooze  and  over  the  loam  where  eyes  look  and  ears 

hear 

And  arms  have  a  chance  to  hammer  and  shoot  and  run 
motors. 

You  make  us 

Proud  of  our  legs,  old  man. 

And  you  left  off  the  head  here, 

The    skull    found    always    crumbling    neighbor   of    the 
ankles. 


SUBWAY 

DOWN  between  the  walls  of  shadow 
Where  the  iron  laws  insist, 
The  hunger  voices  mock. 

The  worn  wayfaring  men 
With  the  hunched  and  humble  shoulders, 
Throw  their  laughter  into  toil. 


THE    SHOVEL   MAN 

ON  the  street 

Slung  on  his  shoulder  is  a  handle  half  way  across, 
Tied  in  a  big  knot  on  the  scoop  of  cast  iron 
Are  the  overalls  faded  from  sun  and  rain  in  the  ditches ; 
Spatter  of  dry  clay  sticking  yellow  on  his  left  sleeve 
And  a  flimsy  shirt  open  at  the  throat, 
I  know  him  for  a  shovel  man, 
A  dago  working  for  a  dollar  six  bits  a  day 
And  a  dark-eyed  woman  in  the  old  country  dreams  of 
him  for  one  of  the  world's  ready  men  with  a  pair 
of  fresh  lips  and  a  kiss  better  than  all  the  wild 
grapes  that  ever  grew  in  Tuscany. 


16 


' 


A  TEAMSTER'S   FAREWELL 

Sobs  En  Route  to  a  Penitentiary 

GOOD-BY  now  to  the  streets  and  the  clash  of  wheels  and 

locking  hubs, 

The  sun  coming  on  the  brass  buckles  and  harness  knobs, 
The  muscles  of  the  horses   sliding  under  their  heavy 

haunches, 

Good-by  now  to  the  traffic  policeman  and  his  whistle, 
The  smash  of  the  iron  hoof  on  the  stones, 
All  the  crazy  wonderful  slamming  roar  of  the  street — 
O  God,  there's  noises  I'm  going  to  be  hungry  for. 


FISH    CRIER 

I  KNOW  a  Jew  fish  crier  down  on  Maxwell  Street  with  a 
voice  like  a  north  wind  blowing  over  corn  stubble 
in  January. 

He  dangles  herring  before  prospective  customers  evinc 
ing  a  joy  identical  with  that  of  Pavlowa  dancing. 

His  face  is  that  of  a  man  terribly  glad  to  be  selling  fish, 
terribly  glad  that  God  made  fish,  and  customers  to 
whom  he  may  call  his  wares  from  a  pushcart. 


18 


PICNIC   BOAT 

SUNDAY  night  and  the  park  policemen  tell  each  other  it 
is  dark  as  a  stack  of  black  cats  on  Lake  Michigan. 

A  big  picnic  boat  comes  home  to  Chicago  from  the  peach 
farms  of  Saugatuck. 

Hundreds  of  electric  bulbs  break  the  night's  darkness,  a 
flock  of  red  and  yellow  birds  with  wings  at  a  stand 
still. 

Running  along  the  deck  railings  are  festoons  and  leap 
ing  in  curves  are  loops  of  light  from  prow  and  stern 
to  the  tall  smokestacks. 

Over  the  hoarse  crunch  of  waves  at  my  pier  comes  a 
hoarse  answer  in  the  rhythmic  oompa  of  the  brasses 
playing  a  Polish  folk-song  for  the  home-comers. 


HAPPINESS 

I  ASKED  professors  who  teach  the  meaning  of  life  to  tell 

me  what  is  happiness. 
And  I  went  to  famous  executives  who  boss  the  work  of 

thousands  of  men. 
They  all  shook  their  heads  and  gave  me  a  smile  as  though 

I  was  trying  to  fool  with  them. 
And  then  one  Sunday  afternoon  I  wandered  out  along 

the  Desplaines  river 
And  I  saw  a  crowd  of  Hungarians  under  the  trees  with 

their  women  and  children  and  a  keg  of  beer  and  an 

accordion. 


20 


MUCKERS 

TWENTY  men  stand  watching  the  muckers. 
Stabbing  the  sides  of  the  ditch 
Where  clay  gleams  yellow, 
Driving  the  blades  of  their  shovels 
Deeper  and  deeper  for  the  new  gas  mains, 
Wiping  sweat  off  their  faces 

With  red  bandanas. 

The  muckers  work  on     .     .     pausing     .     .     to  pull 
Their  boots  out  of  suckholes  where  they  slosh. 

Of  the  twenty  looking  on 
Ten  murmur,  "O,  it's  a  hell  of  a  job," 
Ten  others,  "Jesus,  I  wish  I  had  the  job." 


21 


BLACKLISTED 

WHY  shall  I  keep  the  old  name? 

What  is  a  name  anywhere  anyway? 

A  name  is  a  cheap  thing  all  fathers  and  mothers  leave 

each  child: 

A  job  is  a  job  and  I  want  to  live,  so 
Why  does  God  Almighty  or  anybody  else  care  whether 

I  take  a  new  name  to  go  by  ? 


22 


GRACELAND 

TOMB  of  a  millionaire, 
A  multi-millionaire,  ladies  and  gentlemen, 
Place  of  the  dead  where  they  spend  every  year 
The  usury  of  twenty-five  thousand  dollars 

For  upkeep  and  flowers 
To  keep  fresh  the  memory  of  the  dead. 
The  merchant  prince  gone  to  dust 
Commanded  in  his  written  will 
Over  the  signed  name  of  his  last  testament 
Twenty-five  thousand  dollars  be  set  aside 
For  roses,  lilacs,  hydrangeas,  tulips, 
For  perfume  and  color,  sweetness  of  remembrance 
Around  his  last  long  home. 

(A  hundred  cash  girls  want  nickels  to  go  to  the  movies 

to-night. 
In  the  back  stalls  of  a  hundred  saloons,  women  are  at 

tables 
Drinking  with  men  or  waiting  for  men  jingling  loose 

silver  dollars  in  their  pockets. 
In  a  hundred  furnished  rooms  is  a  girl  who  sells  silk  or 

dress  goods  or  leather  stuff  for  six  dollars  a  week 

wages 
And  when  she  pulls  on  her  stockings  in  the  morning  she 

is  reckless  about  God  and  the  newspapers  and  the 

police,   the  talk   of  her  home   town  or   the   name 

people  call  her.) 

23 


CHILD   OF   THE   ROMANS 

THE  dago  shovelman  sits  by  the  railroad  track 
Eating  a  noon  meal  of  bread  and  bologna. 

A  train  whirls  by,  and  men  and  women  at  tables 
Alive  with  red  roses  and  yellow  jonquils, 
Eat  steaks  running  with  brown  gravy, 
Strawberries  and  cream,  eclaires  and  coffee. 
The  dago  shovelman  finishes  the  dry  bread  and  bologna, 
Washes  it  down  with  a  dipper  from  the  water-boy, 
And  goes  back  to  the  second  half  of  a  ten-hour  day's 

work 

Keeping  the  road-bed  so  the  roses  and  jonquils 
Shake  hardly  at  all  in  the  cut  glass  vases 
Standing  slender  on  the  tables  in  the  dining  cars. 


24 


THE  RIGHT  TO  GRIEF 

To  Certain  Poets  About  to  Die 

TAKE  your  fill  of  intimate  remorse,  perfumed  sorrow, 
Over  the  dead  child  of  a  millionaire, 
And  the  pity  of  Death  refusing  any  check  on  the  bank 
Which    the    millionaire    might    order   his    secretary    to 

scratch  off 
And  get  cashed. 

Very  well, 

You  for  your  grief  and  I  for  mine. 
Let  me  have  a  sorrow  my  own  if  I  want  to. 

I  shall  cry  over  the  dead  child  of  a  stockyards  hunky. 
His  job  is  sweeping  blood  off  the  floor. 
He  gets  a  dollar  seventy  cents  a  day  when  he  works 
And  it's  many  tubs  of  blood  he  shoves  out  with  a  broom 
day  by  day. 

Now  his  three  year  old  daughter 
Is  in  a  white  coffin  that  cost  him  a  week's  wages. 
Every  Saturday  night  he  will  pay  the  undertaker  fifty 
cents  till  the  debt  is  wiped  out. 

The  hunky  and  his  wife  and  the  kids 
Cry  over  the  pinched  face  almost  at  peace  in  the  white 
box. 

25 


26  Chicago  Poems 

They  remember  it  was  scrawny  and  ran  up  high  doctor 

bills. 
They  are  glad  it  is  gone  for  the  rest  of  the  family  now 

will  have  more  to  eat  and  wear. 

Yet  before  the  majesty  of  Death  they  cry  around  the 

coffin 
And  wipe  their  eyes  with  red  bandanas  and  sob  when 

the  priest  says,  "  God  have  mercy  on  us  all." 

I  have  a  right  to  feel  my  throat  choke  about  this. 

You  take  your  grief  and  I  mine — see  ? 

To-morrow  there  is  no  funeral  and  the  hunky  goes  back 

to  his  job  sweeping  blood  off  the  floor  at  a  dollar 

seventy  cents  a  day. 
All  he  does  all  day  long  is  keep  on  shoving  hog  blood 

ahead  of  him  with  a  broom. 


MAG 

I  WISH  to  God  I  never  saw  you,  Mag. 
I  wish  you  never  quit  your  job  and  came  along  with  me. 
I  wish  we  never  bought  a  license  and  a  white  dress 
For  you  to  get  married  in  the  day  we  ran  off  to  a  min 
ister 
And  told  him  we  would  love  each  other  and  take  care  of 

each  other 

Always  and  always  long  as  the  sun  and  the  rain  lasts  any 
where. 
Yes,  I'm  wishing  now  you  lived  somewhere  away  from 

here 

And  I  was  a  bum  on  the  bumpers  a  thousand  miles  away 
dead  broke. 

I  wish  the  kids  had  never  come 
And  rent  and  coal  and  clothes  to  pay  for 
And  a  grocery  man  calling  for  cash, 
Every  day  cash  for  beans  and  prunes. 
I  wish  to  God  I  never  saw  you,  Mag. 
I  wish  to  God  the  kids  had  never  come. 


27 


ONION    DAYS 

MRS.  GABRIELLE  GIOVANNITTI  comes  along  Peoria  Street 
every  morning  at  nine  o'clock 

With  kindling  wood  piled  on  top  of  her  head,  her  eyes 
looking  straight  ahead  to  find  the  way  for  her  old 
feet. 

Her  daughter-in-law,  Mrs.  Pietro  Giovannitti,  whose 
husband  was  killed  in  a  tunnel  explosion  through 
the  negligence  of  a  fellow-servant, 

Works  ten  hours  a  day,  sometimes  twelve,  picking  onions 
for  Jasper  on  the  Bowmanville  road. 

She  takes  a  street  car  at  half-past  five  in  the  morning, 
Mrs.  Pietro  Giovannitti  does, 

And  gets  back  from  Jasper's  with  cash  for  her  day's 
work,  between  nine  and  ten  o'clock  at  night. 

Last  week  she  got  eight  cents  a  box,  Mrs.  Pietro  Gio 
vannitti,  picking  onions  for  Jasper, 

But  this  week  Jasper  dropped  the  pay  to  six  cents  a 
box  because  so  many  women  and  girls  were  answer 
ing  the  ads  in  the  Dally  News. 

Jasper  belongs  to  an  Episcopal  church  in  Ravenswood 
and  on  certain  Sundays 

He  enjoys  chanting  the  Nicene  creed  with  his  daughters 
on  each  side  of  him  joining  their  voices  with  his. 

If  the  preacher  repeats  old  sermons  of  a  Sunday,  Jas 
per's  mind  wanders  to  his  7OO-acre  farm  and  how  he 
can  make  it  produce  more  efficiently 
28 


Onion  Days  29 

And  sometimes  he  speculates  on  whether  he  could  word 
an  ad  in  the  Daily  News  so  it  would  bring  more 
women  and  girls  out  to  his  farm  and  reduce  operat 
ing  costs. 

Mrs.  Pietro  Giovannitti  is  far  from  desperate  about  life ; 
her  joy  is  in  a  child  she  knows  will  arrive  to  her  in 
three  months. 

And  now  while  these  are  the  pictures  for  today  there  are 
other  pictures  of  the  Giovannitti  people  I  could  give 
you  for  to-morrow, 

And  how  some  of  them  go  to  the  county  agent  on  win 
ter  mornings  with  their  baskets  for  beans  and  corn- 
meal  and  molasses. 

I  listen  to  fellows  saying  here's  good  stuff  for  a  novel  or 
it  might  be  worked  up  into  a  good  play. 

I  say  there's  no  dramatist  living  can  put  old  Mrs. 
Gabrielle  Giovannitti  into  a  play  with  that  kindling 
wood  piled  on  top  of  her  head  coming  along  Peoria 
Street  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning. 


POPULATION   DRIFTS 

NEW-MOWN  hay  smell  and  wind  of  the  plain  made  her 
a  woman  whose  ribs  had  the  power  of  the  hills  in 
them  and  her  hands  were  tough  for  work  and  there 
was  passion  for  life  in  her  womb. 

She  and  her  man  crossed  the  ocean  and  the  years  that 
marked  their  faces  saw  them  haggling  with  landlords 
and  grocers  while  six  children  played  on  the  stones 
and  prowled  in  the  garbage  cans. 

One  child  coughed  its  lungs  away,  two  more  have  ade 
noids  and  can  neither  talk  nor  run  like  their  mother, 
one  is  in  jail,  two  have  jobs  in  a  box  factory 

And  as  they  fold  the  pasteboard,  they  wonder  what  the 
wishing  is  and  the  wistful  glory  in  them  that  flut 
ters  faintly  when  the  glimmer  of  spring  comes  on 
the  air  or  the  green  of  summer  turns  brown : 

They  do  not  know  it  is  the  new-mown  hay  smell  calling 
and  the  wind  of  the  plain  praying  for  them  to  come 
back  and  take  hold  of  life  again  with  tough  hands 
and  with  passion. 


CRIPPLE 

ONCE  when  I  saw  a  cripple 

Gasping  slowly  his  last  days  with  the  white  plague, 

Looking  from  hollow  eyes,  calling  for  air, 

Desperately  gesturing  with  wasted  hands 

In  the  dark  and  dust  of  a  house  down  in  a  slum, 

I  said  to  myself 

I  would  rather  have  been  a  tall  sunflower 

Living  in  a  country  garden 

Lifting  a  golden-brown  face  to  the  summer, 

Rain-washed  and  dew-misted, 

Mixed  with  the  poppies  and  ranking  hollyhocks, 

And  wonderingly  watching  night  after  night 

The  clear  silent  processionals  of  stars. 


A   FENCE 

Now  the  stone  house  on  the  lake  front  is  finished  and  the 
workmen  are  beginning  the  fence. 

The  palings  are  made  of  iron  bars  with  steel  points  that 
can  stab  the  life  out  of  any  man  who  falls  on  them. 

As  a  fence,  it  is  a  masterpiece,  and  will  shut  off  the  rab 
ble  and  all  vagabonds  and  hungry  men  and  all  wan 
dering  children  looking  for  a  place  to  play. 

Passing  through  the  bars  and  over  the  steel  points  will  go 
nothing  except  Death  and  the  Rain  and  To-morrow. 


ANNA   IMROTH 

CROSS  the  hands  over  the  breast  here — so. 
Straighten  the  legs  a  little  more — so. 
And  call  for  the  wagon  to  come  and  take  her  home. 
Her  mother  will  cry  some  and  so  will  her  sisters  and 

brothers. 
But  all  of  the  others  got  down  and  they  are  safe  and 

this  is  the  only  one  of  the  factory  girls  who 

wasn't  lucky  in  making  the  jump  when  the  fire 

broke. 
It  is  the  hand  of  God  and  the  lack  of  fire  escapes. 


33 


WORKING   GIRLS 

THE  working  girls  in  the  morning  are  going  to  work — 
long  lines  of  them  afoot  amid  the  downtown  stores 
and  factories,  thousands  with  little  brick-shaped 
lunches  wrapped  in  newspapers  under  their  arms. 

Each  morning  as  I  move  through  this  river  of  young- 
woman  life  I  feel  a  wonder  about  where  it  is  all 
going,  so  many  with  a  peach  bloom  of  young  years 
on  them  and  laughter  of  red  lips  and  memories  in 
their  eyes  of  dances  the  night  before  and  plays  and 
walks. 

Green  and  gray  streams  run  side  by  side  in  a  river  and 
so  here  are  always  the  others,  those  who  have  been 
over  the  way,  the  women  who  know  each  one  the 
end  of  life's  gamble  for  her,  the  meaning  and  the 
clew,  the  how  and  the  why  of  the  dances  and  the 
arms  that  passed  around  their  waists  and  the  fingers 
that  played  in  their  hair. 

Faces  go  by  written  over :  "  I  know  it  all,  I  know  where 
the  bloom  and  the  laughter  go  and  I  have  memo 
ries,"  and  the  feet  of  these  move  slower  and  they 
have  wisdom  where  the  others  have  beauty. 

So  the  green  and  the  gray  move  in  the  early  morning 
on  the  downtown  streets. 


34 


MAMIE 

MAMIE  beat  her  head  against  the  bars  of  a  little  Indiana 
town  and  dreamed  of  romance  and  big  things  off 
somewhere  the  way  the  railroad  trains  all  ran. 

She  could  see  the  smoke  of  the  engines  get  lost  down 
where  the  streaks  of  steel  flashed  in  the  sun  and 
when  the  newspapers  came  in  on  the  morning  mail 
she  knew  there  was  a  big  Chicago  far  off,  where  all 
the  trains  ran. 

She  got  tired  of  the  barber  shop  boys  and  the  post  office 
chatter  and  the  church  gossip  and  the  old  pieces  the 
band  played  on  the  Fourth  of  July  and  Decoration 
Day 

And  sobbed  at  her  fate  and  beat  her  head  against  the 
bars  and  was  going  to  kill  herself 

When  the  thought  came  to  her  that  if  she  was  going  to 
die  she  might  as  well  die  struggling  for  a  clutch  of 
romance  among  the  streets  of  Chicago. 

She  has  a  job  now  at  six  dollars  a  week  in  the  basement 
of  the  Boston  Store 

And  even  now  she  beats  her  head  against  the  bars  in  the 
same  old  way  and  wonders  if  there  is  a  bigger  place 
the  railroads  run  to  from  Chicago  where  maybe 
there  is 

romance 
and  big  things 
and  real  dreams 
that  never  go  smash. 

35 


PERSONALITY 

Musings    of    a    Police    Reporter    in    the    Identification 

Bureau 

You  have  loved  forty  women,  but  you  have  only  one 
thumb. 

You  have  led  a  hundred  secret  lives,  but  you  mark  only 
one  thumb. 

You  go  round  the  world  and  fight  in  a  thousand  wars  and 
win  all  the  world's  honors,  but  when  you  come  back 
home  the  print  of  the  one  thumb  your  mother  gave 
you  is  the  same  print  of  thumb  you  had  in  the  old 
home  when  your  mother  kissed  you  and  said 
good-by. 

Out  of  the  whirling  womb  of  time  come  millions  of  men 
and  their  feet  crowd  the  earth  and  they  cut  one  an- 
others'  throats  for  room  to  stand  and  among  them  all 
are  not  two  thumbs  alike. 

Somewhere  is  a  Great  God  of  Thumbs  who  can  tell  the 
inside  story  of  this. 


CUMULATIVES 

STORMS  have  beaten  on  this  point  of  land 
And  ships  gone  to  wreck  here 

and  the  passers-by  remember  it 

with  talk  on  the  deck  at  night 

as  they  near  it. 

Fists  have  beaten  on  the  face  of  this  old  prize-fighter 
And  his  battles  have  held  the  sporting  pages 

and  on  the  street  they  indicate  him  with  their 
right  fore-finger  as  one  who  once  wore 
a  championship  belt. 

A  hundred  stories  have  been  published  and  a  thousand 

rumored 

About  why  this  tall  dark  man  has  divorced  two  beau 
tiful  young  women 
And  married  a  third  who  resembles  the  first  two 

and  they  shake  their  heads  and  say,  "  There  he 

goes," 

when  he  passes  by  in  sunny  weather  or  in  rain 
along  the  city  streets. 


37 


TO    CERTAIN  JOURNEYMEN 

UNDERTAKERS,  hearse  drivers,  grave  diggers, 

I  speak  to  you  as  one  not  afraid  of  your  business. 

You  handle  dust  going  to  a  long  country, 

You  know  the  secret  behind  your  job  is  the  same  whether 
you  lower  the  coffin  with  modern,  automatic  ma 
chinery,  well-oiled  and  noiseless,  or  whether  the 
body  is  laid  in  by  naked  hands  and  then  covered 
by  the  shovels. 

Your  day's  work  is  done  with  laughter  many  days  of  the 

year, 
And  you  earn  a  living  by  those  who  say  good-by  today 

in  thin  whispers. 


CHAMFORT 

THERE'S  Chamfort.    He's  a  sample. 

Locked  himself  in  his  library  with  a  gun, 

Shot  off  his  nose  and  shot  out  his  right  eye. 

And  this  Chamfort  knew  how  to  write 

And  thousands  read  his  books  on  how  to  live, 

But  he  himself  didn't  know 

How  to  die  by  force  of  his  own  hand — see  ? 

They  found  him  a  red  pool  on  the  carpet 

Cool  as  an  April  forenoon, 

Talking  and  talking  gay  maxims  and  grim  epi 
grams. 

Well,  he  wore  bandages  over  his  nose  and  right 
eye, 

Drank  coffee  and  chatted  many  years 

With  men  and  women  who  loved  him 

Because  he  laughed  and  daily  dared  Death : 

"  Come  and  take  me." 


39 


LIMITED 

I  AM  riding  on  a  limited  express,  one  of  the  crack  trains 

of  the  nation. 
Hurtling  across  the  prairie  into  blue  haze  and  dark  air 

go  fifteen  all-steel  coaches  holding  a  thousand  peo- 

pie. 
(All  the  coaches  shall  be  scrap  and  rust  and  all  the  men 

and  women  laughing  in  the  diners  and  sleepers  shall 

pass  to  ashes.) 
I  ask  a  man  in  the  smoker  where  he  is  going  and  he 

answers :  "  Omaha." 


40 


THE   HAS-BEEN 

A  STONE  face  higher  than  six  horses  stood  five  thousand 
years  gazing  at  the  world  seeming  to  clutch  a  secret. 

A  boy  passes  and  throws  a  niggerhead  that  chips  off  the 
end  of  the  nose  from  the  stone  face;  he  lets  fly  a 
mud  ball  that  spatters  the  right  eye  and  cheek  of  the 
old  looker-on. 

The  boy  laughs  and  goes  whistling  "  ee-ee-ee  ee-ee-ee." 
The  stone  face  stands  silent,  seeming  to  clutch  a 
secret. 


IN   A   BACK  ALLEY 

REMEMBRANCE  for  a  great  man  is  this. 
The  newsies  are  pitching  pennies. 
And  on  the  copper  disk  is  the  man's  face. 
Dead  lover  of  boys,  what  do  you  ask  for  now  ? 


A   COIN 

YOUR  western  heads  here  cast  on  money, 
You  are  the  two  that  fade  away  together, 
Partners  in  the  mist. 

Lunging  buffalo  shoulder, 

Lean  Indian  face, 

We  who  come  after  where  you  are  gone 
Salute  your  forms  on  the  new  nickel. 

You  are 
To  us: 
The  past. 

Runners 

On  the  prairie: 

Good-by. 


43 


DYNAMITER 

I  SAT  with  a  dynamiter  at  supper  in  a  German  saloon 

eating  steak  and  onions. 
And  he  laughed  and  told  stones  of  his  wife  and  children 

and  the  cause  of  labor  and  the  working  class. 
It  was  laughter  of  an  unshakable  man  knowing  life  to  be 

a  rich  and  red-blooded  thing. 
Yes,  his  laugh  rang  like  the  call  of  gray  birds  filled  with 

a  glory  of  joy  ramming  their  winged  flight  through 

a  rain  storm. 
His  name  was  in  many  newspapers  as  an  enemy  of  the 

nation  and  few  keepers  of  churches  or  schools  would 

open  their  doors  to  him. 
Over  the  steak  and  onions  not  a  word  was  said  of  his 

deep  days  and  nights  as  a  dynamiter. 
Only  I  always  remember  him  as  a  lover  of  life,  a  lover 

of  children,  a  lover  of  all  free,  reckless  laughter 

everywhere — lover  of  red  hearts  and  red  blood  the 

world  over. 


ICE   HANDLER 

I  KNOW  an  ice  handler  who  wears  a  flannel  shirt  with 
pearl  buttons  the  size  of  a  dollar, 

And  he  lugs  a  hundred-pound  hunk  into  a  saloon  ice 
box,  helps  himself  to  cold  ham  and  rye  bread, 

Tells  the  bartender  it's  hotter  than  yesterday  and  will  be 
hotter  yet  to-morrow,  by  Jesus, 

And  is  on  his  way  with  his  head  in  the  air  and  a  hard 
pair  of  fists. 

He  spends  a  dollar  or  so  every  Saturday  night  on  a  two 
hundred  pound  woman  who  washes  dishes  in  the 
Hotel  Morrison. 

He  remembers  when  the  union  was  organized  he  broke 
the  noses  of  two  scabs  and  loosened  the  nuts  so  the 
wheels  came  off  six  different  wagons  one  morning, 
and  he  came  around  and  watched  the  ice  melt  in  the 
street. 

All  he  was  sorry  for  was  one  of  the  scabs  bit  him  on  the 
knuckles  of  the  right  hand  so  they  bled  when  he 
came  around  to  the  saloon  to  tell  the  boys  about  it. 


45 


JACK 

JACK  was  a  swarthy,  swaggering  son-of-a-gun. 

He  worked  thirty  years  on  the  railroad,  ten  hours  a  day, 
and  his  hands  were  tougher  than  sole  leather. 

He  married  a  tough  woman  and  they  had  eight  children 
and  the  woman  died  and  the  children  grew  up  and 
went  away  and  wrote  the  old  man  every  two  years. 

He  died  in  the  poorhouse  sitting  on  a  bench  in  the  sun 
telling  reminiscences  to  other  old  men  whose  women 
were  dead  and  children  scattered. 

There  was  joy  on  his  face  when  he  died  as  there  was  joy 
on  his  face  when  he  lived — he  was  a  swarthy,  swag 
gering  son-of-a-gun. 


FELLOW   CITIZENS 

I  DRANK  musty  ale  at  the  Illinois  Athletic  Club  with 
the  millionaire  manufacturer  of  Green  River  butter 
one  night 

And  his  face  had  the  shining  light  of  an  old-time  Quaker, 
he  spoke  of  a  beautiful  daughter,  and  I  knew  he  had 
a  peace  and  a  happiness  up  his  sleeve  somewhere. 

Then  I  heard  Jim  Kirch  make  a  speech  to  the  Advertis 
ing  Association  on  the  trade  resources  of  South 
America. 

And  the  way  he  lighted  a  three-for-a-nicke]  stogie  and 
cocked  it  at  an  angle  regardless  of  the  manners  of 
our  best  people, 

I  knew  he  had  a  clutch  on  a  real  happiness  even  though 
some  of  the  reporters  on  his  newspaper  say  he  is 
the  living  double  of  Jack  London's  Sea  Wolf. 

In  the  mayor's  office  the  mayor  himself  told  me  he  was 
happy  though  it  is  a  hard  job  to  satisfy  all  the  office- 
seekers  and  eat  all  the  dinners  he  is  asked  to  eat. 

Down  in  Gilpin  Place,  near  Hull  House,  was  a  man  with 
his  jaw  wrapped  for  a  bad  toothache, 

And  he  had  it  all  over  the  butter  millionaire,  Jim  Kirch 
and  the  mayor  when  it  came  to  happiness. 

He  is  a  maker  of  accordions  and  guitars  and  not  only 
makes  them  from  start  to  finish,  but  plays  them 
after  he  makes  them. 

47 


48  Chicago  Poems 

And  he  had  a  guitar  of  mahogany  with  a  walnut  bottom 

he  offered  for  seven  dollars  and  a  half  if  I  wanted  it, 
And  another  just  like  it,  only  smaller,  for  six  dollars, 

though  he  never  mentioned  the  price  till  I  asked 

him, 
And  he  stated  the  price  in  a  sorry  way,  as  though  the 

music  and  the  make  of  an  instrument  count  for  a 

million  times  more  than  the  price  in  money. 
I  thought  he  had  a  real  soul  and  knew  a  lot  about  God. 
There  was  light  in  his  eyes  of  one  who  has  conquered 

sorrow  in  so  far  as  sorrow  is  conquerable  or  worth 

conquering. 
Anyway  he  is  the  only  Chicago  citizen  I  was  jealous  of 

that  day. 
He  played  a  dance  they  play  in  some  parts  of  Italy 

when  the  harvest  of  grapes  is  over  and  the  wine 

presses  are  ready  for  work. 


NIGGER 

I  AM  the  nigger. 

Singer  of  songs, 

Dancer.  .  . 

Softer  than  fluff  of  cotton.  .  . 

Harder  than  dark  earth 

Roads  beaten  in  the  sun 

By  the  bare  feet  of  slaves.  .  . 

Foam  of  teeth  .  .  .  breaking  crash  of  laughter.  .  . 

Red  love  of  the  blood  of  woman, 

White  love  of  the  tumbling  pickaninnies.  .  . 

Lazy  love  of  the  banjo  thrum.  .  . 

Sweated  and  driven  for  the  harvest-wage, 

Loud  laugher  with  hands  like  hams, 

Fists  toughened  on  the  handles, 

Smiling  the  slumber  dreams  of  old  jungles, 

Crazy  as  the  sun  and  dew  and  dripping,  heaving  life 

of  the  jungle, 
Brooding  and  muttering  with  memories  of  shackles : 

I  am  the  nigger. 

Look  at  me. 

I  am  the  nigger. 


49 


TWO    NEIGHBORS 

FACES  of  two  eternities  keep  looking  at  me. 
One  is  Omar  Khayam  and  the  red  stuff 

wherein  men  forget  yesterday  and  to-morrow 
and  remember  only  the  voices  and  songs, 
the  stories,  newspapers  and  rights  of  today. 
One  is  Louis  Cornaro  and  a  slim  trick 

of  slow,  short  meals  across  .slow,  short  years, 
letting  Death  open  the   door  only   in   slow,   short 

inches. 

I  have  a  neighbor  who  swears  by  Omar. 
I  have  a  neighbor  who  swears  by  Cornaro. 

Both  are  happy. 
Faces  of  two  eternities  keep  looking  at  me. 

Let  them  look. 


'50 


STYLE 

STYLE — go  ahead  talking  about  style. 

You  can  tell  where  a  man  gets  his  style  just 

as  you  can  tell  where  Pavlowa  got  her  legs 

or  Ty  Cobb  his  batting  eye. 

Go  on  talking. 

Only  don't  take  my  style  away. 
It's  my  face. 
Maybe  no  good 

but  anyway,  my  face. 

I  talk  with  it,  I  sing  with  it,  I  see,  taste  and  feel  with  it, 
I  know  why  I  want  to  keep  it. 

Kill  my  style 

and  you  break  Pavlowa's  legs, 

and  you  blind  Ty  Cobb's  batting  eye. 


TO    BEACHEY,    1912 

RIDING  against  the  east, 

A  veering,  steady  shadow 

Purrs  the  motor-call 

Of  the  man-bird 

Ready  with  the  death-laughter 

In  his  throat 

And  in  his  heart  always 

The  love  of  the  big  blue  beyond. 

Only  a  man, 

A  far  fleck  of  shadow  on  the  east 

Sitting  at  ease 

With  his  hands  on  a  wheel 

And  around  him  the  large  gray  wings. 

Hold  him,  great  soft  wings, 

Keep  and  deal  kindly,  O  wings, 

With  the  cool,  calm  shadow  at  the  wheel. 


UNDER   A   HAT   RIM 

WHILE  the  hum  and  the  hurry 

Of  passing  footfalls 

Beat  in  my  ear  like  the  restless  surf 

Of  a  wind-blown  sea, 

A  soul  came  to  me 

Out  of  the  look  on  a  face. 

Eyes  like  a  lake 

Where  a  storm-wind  roams 

Caught  me  from  under 

The  rim  of  a  hat. 

I  thought  of  a  midsea  wreck 
and  bruised  fingers  clinging 
to  a  broken  state-room  door. 


53 


IN   A   BREATH 

To  the  Williamson  Brothers 

HIGH  noon.  White  sun  flashes  on  the  Michigan  Avenue 
asphalt.  Drum  of  hoofs  and  whirr  of  motors. 
Women  trapsing  along  in  flimsy  clothes  catching 
play  of  sun-fire  to  their  skin  and  eyes. 

Inside  the  playhouse  are  movies  from  under  the  sea. 
From  the  heat  of  pavements  and  the  dust  of  side 
walks,  passers-by  go  in  a  breath  to  be  witnesses  of 
large  cool  sponges,  large  cool  fishes,  large  cool  val 
leys  and  ridges  of  coral  spread  silent  in  the  soak  of 
the  ocean  floor  thousands  of  years. 

A  naked  swimmer  dives.  A  knife  in  his  right  hand 
shoots  a  streak  at  the  throat  of  a  shark.  The  tail 
of  the  shark  lashes.  One  swing  would  kill  the  swim 
mer.  .  .  Soon  the  knife  goes  into  the  soft  under- 
neck  of  the  veering  fish.  .  .  Its  mouthful  of  teeth, 
each  tooth  a  dagger  itself,  set  row  on  row,  glistens 
when  the  shuddering,  yawning  cadaver  is  hauled  up 
by  the  brothers  of  the  swimmer. 

Outside  in  the  street  is  the  murmur  and  singing  of  life 
in  the  sun — horses,  motors,  women  trapsing  along 
in  flimsy  clothes,  play  of  sun-fire  in  their  blood. 

54 


BATH 

A  MAN  saw  the  whole  world  as  a  grinning  skull  and 
cross-bones.  The  rose  flesh  of  life  shriveled  from  all 
faces.  Nothing  counts.  Everything  is  a  fake.  Dust  to 
dust  and  ashes  to  ashes  and  then  an  old  darkness  and  a 
useless  silence.  So  he  saw  it  all.  Then  he  went  to  a 
Mischa  Elman  concert.  Two  hours  waves  of  sound  beat 
on  his  eardrums.  Music  washed  something  or  other  in 
side  him.  Music  broke  down  and  rebuilt  something  or 
other  in  his  head  and  heart.  He  joined  in  five  encores 
for  the  young  Russian  Jew  with  the  fiddle.  When  he 
got  outside  his  heels  hit  the  sidewalk  a  new  way.  He 
was  the  same  man  in  the  same  world  as  before.  Only 
there  was  a  singing  fire  and  a  climb  of  roses  everlast 
ingly  over  the  world  he  looked  on. 


55 


BRONZES 


THE  bronze  General  Grant  riding  a  bronze  horse  in  Lin 
coln  Park 

Shrivels  in  the  sun  by  day  when  the  motor  cars  whirr 
by  in  long  processions  going  somewhere  to  keep  ap 
pointment  for  dinner  and  matinees  and  buying  and 
selling 

Though  in  the  dusk  and  nightfall  when  high  waves  are 
piling 

On  the  slabs  of  the  promenade  along  the  lake  shore  near 
by 

I  have  seen  the  general  dare  the  combers  come  closer 

And  make  to  ride  his  bronze  horse  out  into  the  hoofs 
and  guns  of  the  storm. 


II 

I  cross  Lincoln  Park  on  a  winter  night  when  the  snow 
is  falling. 

Lincoln  in  bronze  stands  among  the  white  lines  of  snow, 
his  bronze  forehead  meeting  soft  echoes  of  the  new 
sies  crying  forty  thousand  men  are  dead  along  the 
Yser,  his  bronze  ears  listening  to  the  mumbled  roar 
of  the  city  at  his  bronze  feet. 

A  lithe  Indian  on  a  bronze  pony,  Shakespeare  seated  with 
long  legs  in  bronze,  Garibaldi  in  a  bronze  cape,  they 
hold  places  in  the  cold,  lonely  snow  to-night  on  their 
pedestals  and  so  they  will  hold  them  past  midnight 
and  into  the  dawn. 


57 


DUNES 

WHAT  do  we  see  here  in  the  sand  dunes  of  the  white 

moon  alone  with  our  thoughts,  Bill, 
Alone  with  our  dreams,  Bill,  soft  as  the  women  tying 

scarves  around  their  heads  dancing, 
Alone  with  a  picture  and  a  picture  coming  one  after  the 

other  of  all  the  dead, 
The  dead  more  than  all  these  grains  of  sand  one  by  one 

piled  here  in  the  moon, 
Piled  against  the  sky-line  taking  shapes  like  the  hand  of 

the  wind  wanted, 
What  do  we  see  here,  Bill,  outside  of  what  the  wise  men 

beat  their  heads  on, 
Outside  of  what  the  poets  cry  for  and  the  soldiers  drive 

on  headlong  and  leave  their  skulls  in  the  sun  for — 

what,  Bill? 


ON   THE   WAY 

LITTLE  one,  you  have  been  buzzing  in  the  books, 
Flittering   in   the   newspapers   and  drinking  beer   with 

lawyers 
And  amid  the  educated  men  of  the  clubs  you  have  been 

getting  an  earful  of  speech  from  trained  tongues. 
Take  an  earful  from  me  once,  go  with  me  on  a  hike 
Along  sand  stretches  on  the  great  inland  sea  here 
And  while  the  eastern  breeze  blows  on  us  and  the  rest 
less  surge 
Of  the  lake  waves  on  the  breakwater  breaks  with  an  ever 

fresh  monotone, 
Let  us  ask  ourselves :  What  is  truth  ?  what  do  you  or  I 

know? 

How  much  do  the  wisest  of  the  world's  men  know  about 
where  the  massed  human  procession  is  going? 

You  have  heard  the  mob  laughed  at? 

I  ask  you :   Is  not  the  mob  rough  as  the  mountains  are 

rough  ? 
And  all  things  human  rise  from  the  mob  and  relapse  and 

rise  again  as  rain  to  the  sea  ? 


59 


READY   TO   KILL 

TEN  minutes  now  I  have  been  looking  at  this. 

I  have  gone  by  here  before  and  wondered  about  it. 

This  is  a  bronze  memorial  of  a  famous  general 

Riding  horseback  with  a  flag  and  a  sword  and  a  revolver 

on  him. 
I  want  to  smash  the  whole  thing  into  a  pile  of  junk  to  be 

hauled  away  to  the  scrap  yard. 
I  put  it  straight  to  you, 
After  the  farmer,  the  miner,  the  shop  man,  the  factory 

hand,  the  fireman  and  the  teamster, 
Have  all  been  remembered  with  bronze  memorials, 
Shaping  them  on  the  job  of  getting  all  of  us 
Something  to  eat  and  something  to  wear, 
When  they  stack  a  few  silhouettes 
Against  the  sky 
Here  in  the  park, 
And  show  the  real  huskies  that  are  doing  the  work  of 

the  world,  and  feeding  people  instead  of  butchering 

them, 

Then  maybe  I  will  stand  here 
And  look  easy  at  this  general  of  the  army  holding  a  flag 

in  the  air, 

And  riding  like  hell  on  horseback 
Ready  to  kill  anybody  that  gets  in  his  way, 
Ready  to  run  the  red  blood  and  slush  the  bowels  of  men 

all  over  the  sweet  new  grass  of  the  prairie. 
60 


TO   A   CONTEMPORARY   BUNKSHOOTER 

You  come  along.  .  .  tearing  your  shirt.  .  .  yelling  about 
Jesus. 

Where  do  you  get  that  stuff  ? 
What  do  you  know  about  Jesus? 

Jesus  had  a  way  of  talking  soft  and  outside  of  a  few 
bankers  and  higher-ups  among  the  con  men  of  Jeru 
salem  everybody  liked  to  have  this  Jesus  around  be 
cause  he  never  made  any  fake  passes  and  everything 
he  said  went  and  he  helped  the  sick  and  gave  the 
people  hope. 

You  come  along  squirting  words  at  us,  shaking  your  fist 
and  calling  us  all  dam  fools  so  fierce  the  froth  slob 
bers  over  your  lips.  .  .  always  blabbing  we're  all 
going  to  hell  straight  off  and  you  know  all  about  it. 

I've  read  Jesus'  words.  I  know  what  he  said.  You  don't 
throw  any  scare  into  me.  I've  got  your  number.  I 
know  how  much  you  know  about  Jesus. 

He  never  came  near  clean  people  or  dirty  people  but 
they  felt  cleaner  because  he  came  along.  It  was  your 
crowd  of  bankers  and  business  men  and  lawyers 
hired  the  sluggers  and  murderers  who  put  Jesus  out 
of  the  running. 

61 


62  Chicago  Poems 

I  say  the  same  bunch  backing  you  nailed  the  nails  into 
the  hands  of  this  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  He  had  lined 
up  against  him  the  same  crooks  and  strong-arm  men 
now  lined  up  with  you  paying  your  way. 

This  Jesus  was  good  to  look  at,  smelled  good,  listened 
good.  He  threw  out  something  fresh  and  beautiful 
from  the  skin  of  his  body  and  the  touch  of  his  hands 
wherever  he  passed  along. 

You  slimy  bunkshooter,  you  put  a  smut  on  every  human 
blossom  in  reach  of  your  rotten  breath  belching 
about  hell-fire  and  hiccupping  about  this  Man  who 
lived  a  clean  life  in  Galilee. 

When  are  you  going  to  quit  making  the  carpenters  build 
emergency  hospitals  for  women  and  girls  driven 
crazy  with  wrecked  nerves  from  your  gibberish  about 
Jesus — I  put  it  to  you  again  :  Where  do  you  get  that 
stuff;  what  do  you  know  about  Jesus? 

Go  ahead  and  bust  all  the  chairs  you  want  to.  Smash 
a  whole  wagon  load  of  furniture  at  every  perform 
ance.  Turn  sixty  somersaults  and  stand  on  your 
nutty  head.  If  it  wasn't  for  the  way  you  scare  the 
women  and  kids  I'd  feel  sorry  for  you  and  pass  the 
hat. 

I  like  to  watch  a  good  four-flusher  work,  but  not  when 
he  starts  people  puking  and  calling  for  the  doctors. 

I  like  a  man  that's  got  nerve  and  can  pull  off  a  great 
original  performance,  but  you — you're  only  a  bug 
house  peddler  of  second-hand  gospel — you're  only 


To  a  Contemporary  Bunkshooter  63 

shoving  out  a  phoney  imitation  of  the  goods  this 
Jesus  wanted  free  as  air  and  sunlight. 

You  tell  people  living  in  shanties  Jesus  is  going  to  fix  it 
up  all  right  with  them  by  giving  them  mansions  in 
the  skies  after  they're  dead  and  the  worms  have 
eaten  'em. 

You  tell  $6  a  week  department  store  girls  all  they  need 
is  Jesus;  you  take  a  steel  trust  wop,  dead  without 
having  lived,  gray  and  shrunken  at  forty  years  of 
age,  and  you  tell  him  to  look  at  Jesus  on  the  cross 
and  he'll  be  all  right. 

You  tell  poor  people  they  don't  need  any  more  money 
on  pay  day  and  even  if  it's  fierce  to  be  out  of  a  job, 
Jesus'll  fix  that  up  all  right,  all  right — all  they  gotta 
do  is  take  Jesus  the  way  you  say. 

I'm  telling  you  Jesus  wouldn't  stand  for  the  stuff  you're 
handing  out.  Jesus  played  it  different.  The  bank 
ers  and  lawyers  of  Jerusalem  got  their  sluggers  and 
murderers  to  go  after  Jesus  just  because  Jesus 
wouldn't  play  their  game.  He  didn't  sit  in  with 
the  big  thieves. 

I  don't  want  a  lot  of  gab  from  a  bunkshooter  in  my  re 
ligion. 

I  won't  take  my  religion  from  any  man  who  never  works 
except  with  his  mouth  and  never  cherishes  any  mem 
ory  except  the  face  of  the  woman  on  the  American 
silver  dollar. 

I  ask  you  to  come  through  and  show  me  where  you're 
pouring  out  the  blood  of  your  life. 


64  Chicago  Poems 

I've  been  to  this  suburb  of  Jerusalem  they  call  Golgotha, 
where  they  nailed  Him,  and  I  know  if  the  story  is 
straight  it  was  real  blood  ran  from  His  hands  and 
the  nail-holes,  and  it  was  real  blood  spurted  in  red 
drops  where  the  spear  of  the  Roman  soldier  rammed 
in  between  the  ribs  of  this  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 


SKYSCRAPER 

BY  day  the  skyscraper  looms  in  the  smoke  and  sun  and 
has  a  soul. 

Prairie  and  valley,  streets  of  the  city,  pour  people  into 
it  and  they  mingle  among  its  twenty  floors  and  are 
poured  out  again  back  to  the  streets,  prairies  and 
valleys. 

It  is  the  men  and  women,  boys  and  girls  so  poured  in  and 
out  all  day  that  give  the  building  a  soul  of  dreams 
and  thoughts  and  memories. 

(Dumped  in  the  sea  or  fixed  in  a  desert,  who  would  care 
for  the  building  or  speak  its  name  or  ask  a  police 
man  the  way  to  it?) 

Elevators  slide  on  their  cables  and  tubes  catch  letters  and 
parcels  and  iron  pipes  carry  gas  and  water  in  and 
sewage  out. 

Wires  climb  with  secrets,  carry  light  and  carry  words, 
and  tell  terrors  and  profits  and  loves — curses  of  men 
grappling  plans  of  business  and  questions  of  women 
in  plots  of  love. 

Hour  by  hour  the  caissons  reach  down  to  the  rock  of  the 
earth  and  hold  the  building  to  a  turning  planet. 

Hour  by  hour  the  girders  play  as  ribs  and  reach  out  and 
hold  together  the  stone  walls  and  floors. 
65 


66  Chicago  Poems 

Hour  by  hour  the  hand  of  the  mason  and  the  stuff  of  the 
mortar  clinch  the  pieces  and  parts  to  the  shape  an 
architect  voted. 

Hour  by  hour  the  sun  and  the  rain,  the  air  and  the  rust, 
and  the  press  of  time  running  into  centuries,  play 
on  the  building  inside  and  out  and  use  it. 

Men  who  sunk  the  pilings  and  mixed  the  mortar  are  laid 
in  graves  where  the  wind  whistles  a  wild  song  with 
out  words 

And  so  are  men  who  strung  the  wires  and  fixed  the  pipes 
and  tubes  and  those  who  saw  it  rise  floor  by  floor. 

Souls  of  them  all  are  here,  even  the  hod  carrier  begging 
at  back  doors  hundreds  of  miles  away  and  the  brick 
layer  who  went  to  state's  prison  for  shooting  another 
man  while  drunk. 

(One  man  fell  from  a  girder  and  broke  his  neck  at  the 
end  of  a  straight  plunge — he  is  here — his  soul  has 
gone  into  the  stones  of  the  building.) 

On  the  office  doors  from  tier  to  tier — hundreds  of  names 
and  each  name  standing  for  a  face  written  across 
with  a  dead  child,  a  passionate  lover,  a  driving  am 
bition  for  a  million  dollar  business  or  a  lobster's 
ease  of  life. 

Behind  the  signs  on  the  doors  they  work  and  the  walls 
tell  nothing  from  room  to  room. 

Ten-dollar-a-week  stenographers  take  letters  from  cor 
poration  officers,  lawyers,  efficiency  engineers,  and 
tons  of  letters  go  bundled  from  the  building  to  all 
ends  of  the  earth. 


Skyscraper  67 

Smiles  and  tears  of  each  office  girl  go  into  the  soul  of 
the  building  just  the  same  as  the  master-men  who 
rule  the  building. 

Hands  of  clocks  turn  to  noon  hours  and  each  floor 
empties  its  men  and  women  who  go  away  and  eat 
and  come  back  to  work. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  afternoon  all  work  slackens  and 
all  jobs  go  slower  as  the  people  feel  day  closing  on 
them. 

One  by  one  the  floors  are  emptied.  .  .  The  uniformed 
elevator  men  are  gone.  Pails  clang.  .  .  Scrubbers 
work,  talking  in  foreign  tongues.  Broom  and  water 
and  mop  clean  from  the  floors  human  dust  and  spit, 
and  machine  grime  of  the  day. 

Spelled  in  electric  fire  on  the  roof  are  words  telling 
miles  of  houses  and  people  where  to  buy  a  thing  for 
money.  The  sign  speaks  till  midnight. 

Darkness  on  the  hallways.  Voices  echo.  Silence 
holds.  .  .  Watchmen  walk  slow  from  floor  to  floor 
and  try  the  doors.  Revolvers  bulge  from  their  hip 
pockets.  .  .  Steel  safes  stand  in  corners.  Money 
is  stacked  in  them. 

A  young  watchman  leans  at  a  window  and  sees  the  lights 
of  barges  butting  their  way  across  a  harbor,  nets  of 
red  and  white  lanterns  in  a  railroad  yard,  and  a  span 
of  glooms  splashed  with  lines  of  white  and  blurs  of 
crosses  and  clusters  over  the  sleeping  city. 

By  night  the  skyscraper  looms  in  the  smoke  and  the  stars 
and  has  a  soul. 


I 


HANDFULS 


FOG 


THE  fog  comes 
on  little  cat  feet. 


It  sits  looking 
over  harbor  and  city 
on  silent  haunches 
and  then  moves  on. 


POOL 

OUT  of  the  fire 

Came  a  man  sunken 

To  less  than  cinders, 

A  tea-cup  of  ashes  or  so. 

And  I, 

The  gold  in  the  house, 

Writhed  into  a  stiff  pool. 


72 


JAN   KUBELIK 

YOUR  bow  swept  over  a  string,  and  a  long  low  note 

quivered  to  the  air. 
(A  mother  of  Bohemia  sobs  over  a  new  child  perfect 

learning  to  suck  milk.) 

Your  bow  ran  fast  over  all  the.  high  strings  fluttering 
and  wild. 

(All  the  girls  in  Bohemia  are  laughing  on  a  Sunday  after 
noon  in  the  hills  with  their  lovers.) 


73 


CHOOSE 

THE  single  clenched  fist  lifted  and  ready, 
Or  the  open  asking  hand  held  out  and  waiting. 

Choose : 
For  we  meet  by  one  or  the  other. 


74 


CRIMSON 

CRIMSON  is  the  slow  smolder  of  the  cigar  end  I  hold, 
Gray  is  the  ash  that  stiffens  and  covers  all  silent  the  fire. 
(A  great  man  I  know  is  dead  and  while  he  lies  in  his 
coffin  a  gone  flame  I  sit  here  in  cumbering  shadows 
and  smoke  and  watch  my  thoughts  come  and  go.) 


75 


WHITELIGHT 

YOUR  whitelight  flashes  the  frost  to-night 
Moon  of  the  purple  and  silent  west. 
Remember  me  jone  of  your  lovers  of  dreams. 


FLUX 

SAND  of  the  sea  runs  red 

Where  the  sunset  reaches  and  quivers. 

Sand  of  the  sea  runs  yellow 

Where  the  moon  slants  and  wavers. 


77 


KIN 

BROTHER,  I  am  fire 
Surging  under  the  ocean  floor. 
I  shall  never  meet  you,  brother — 
Not  for  years,  anyhow; 
Maybe  thousands  of  years,  brother. 
Then  I  will  warm  you, 
Hold  you  close,  wrap  you  in  circles, 
Use  you  and  change  you — 
Maybe  thousands  of  years,  brother. 


WHITE   SHOULDERS 

YOUR  white  shoulders 

I  remember 
And  your  shrug  of  laughter. 

Low  laughter 
Shaken  slow 
From  your  white  shoulders. 


LOSSES 

I  HAVE  love 
And  a  child, 
A  banjo 
And  shadows. 
(Losses  of  God, 
All  will  go 
And  one  day 
We  will  hold 
Only  the  shadows.) 


80 


TROTHS 

YELLOW  dust  on  a  bumble 

bee's  wing, 
Grey  lights  in  a  woman's 

asking  eyes, 
Red  ruins  in  the  changing 

sunset  embers : 
I  take  you  and  pile  high 

the  memories. 
Death  will  break  her  claws 

on  some  I  keep. 


WAR    POEMS 

(1914-1915) 


KILLERS 

I  AM  singing  to  you 

Soft  as  a  man  with  a  dead  child  speaks; 
Hard  as  a  man  in  handcuffs, 
Held  where  he  cannot  move : 

Under  the  sun 
Are  sixteen  million  men, 
Chosen  for  shining  teeth, 
Sharp  eyes,  hard  legs, 
And  a  running  of  young  warm  blood  in  their  wrists. 

And  a  red  juice  runs  on  the  green  grass; 
And  a  red  juice  soaks  the  dark  soil. 
And  the  sixteen  million  are  killing  .  .  .  and  killing 
and  killing. 

I  never  forget  them  day  or  night : 
They  beat  on  my  head  for  memory  of  them; 
They  pound  on  my  heart  and  I  cry  back  to  them, 
To  their  homes  and  women,  dreams  and  games. 

I  wake  in  the  night  and  smell  the  trenches, 
And  hear  the  low  stir  of  sleepers  in  lines — 
Sixteen  million  sleepers  and  pickets  in  the  dark: 
Some  of  them  long  sleepers  for  always, 
85 


86  War  Poems 

Some  of  them  tumbling  to  sleep  to-morrow  for  al 
ways, 

Fixed  in  the  drag  of  the  world's  heartbreak, 
Eating  and  drinking,  toiling  ...  on  a  long  job  of 

killing. 
Sixteen  million  men. 


AMONG   THE   RED   GUNS 

After  waking  at  dawn  one  morning  when  the  wind  sang 
low  among  dry  leaves  in  an  elm 

AMONG  the  red  guns, 
In  the  hearts  of  soldiers 
Running  free  blood 
In  the  long,  long  campaign : 
Dreams  go  on. 

Among  the  leather  saddles, 
In  the  heads  of  soldiers 
Heavy  in  the  wracks  and  kills 
Of  all  straight  fighting: 
Dreams  go  on. 

Among  the  hot  muzzles, 

In  the  hands  of  soldiers 

Brought  from  flesh-folds  of  women — 

Soft  amid  the  blood  and  crying — 

In  all  your  hearts  and  heads 

Among  the  guns  and  saddles  and  muzzles : 

Dreams, 
Dreams  go  on, 

Out  of  the  dead  on  their  backs, 
Broken  and  no  use  any  more : 
Dreams  of  the  way  and  the  end  go  on. 
87 


IRON 

GUNS, 

Long,  steel  guns, 
Pointed  from  the  war  ships 
In  the  name  of  the  war  god. 
Straight,  shining,  polished  guns, 
Clambered  over  with  jackies  in  white  blouses, 
Glory  of  tan  faces,  tousled  hair,  white  teeth, 
Laughing  lithe  jackies  in  white  blouses, 
Sitting  on   the  guns   singing  war  songs,   war 
chanties. 

Shovels, 

Broad,  iron  shovels, 
Scooping  out  oblong  vaults, 
Loosening  turf  and  leveling  sod. 

I  ask  you 

To  witness — 

The  shovel  is  brother  to  the  gun. 


MURMURINGS    IN   A   FIELD   HOSPITAL 

[They  picked  him  up  in  the  grass  where  he  had  lain  two 
days  in  the  rain  with  a  piece  of  shrapnel  in  his  lungs,] 

COME  to  me  only  with  playthings  now  .  .  . 

A  picture  of  a  singing  woman  with  blue  eyes 

Standing  at  a  fence  of  hollyhocks,  poppies  and  sun 
flowers  .  .  . 

Or  an  old  man  I  remember  sitting  with  children  telling 
stories 

Of  days  that  never  happened  anywhere  in  the 
world  .  .  . 

No  more  iron  cold  and  real  to  handle, 

Shaped  for  a  drive  straight  ahead. 

Bring  me  only  beautiful  useless  things. 

Only    old    home    things    touched    at    sunset    in    the 

quiet  .  .  . 

And  at  the  window  one  day  in  summer 
Yellow  of  the  new  crock  of  butter 
Stood  against  the  red  of  new  climbing  roses  .  .  . 
And  the  world  was  all  playthings. 


STATISTICS 

NAPOLEON  shifted, 

Restless  in  the  old  sarcophagus 

And  murmured  to  a  watchguard : 

"Who  goes  there?" 

"  Twenty-one  million  men, 

Soldiers,  armies,  guns, 

Twenty-one  million 

Afoot,  horseback, 

In  the  air, 

Under  the  sea." 

And  Napoleon  turned  to  his  sleep : 

"It  is  not  my  world  answering; 

It  is  some  dreamer  who  knows  not 

The  world  I  marched  in 

From  Calais  to  Moscow." 

And  he  slept  on 

In  the  old  sarcophagus 

While  the  aeroplanes 

Droned  their  motors 

Between  Napoleon's  mausoleum 

And  the  cool  night  stars. 


90 


FIGHT 

RED  drips  from  my  chin  where  I  have  been  eating. 
Not  all  the  blood,  nowhere  near  all,  is  wiped  off  my 
mouth. 

Clots  of  red  mess  my  hair 

And  the  tiger,  the  buffalo,  know  how. 

I  was  a  killer. 

Yes,  I  am  a  killer. 

I  come  from  killing. 

I  go  to  more. 

I  drive  red  joy  ahead  of  me  from  killing. 
Red  gluts  and  red  hungers  run  in  the  smears  and  juices 

of  my  inside  bones : 
The  child  cries  for  a  suck  mother  and  I  cry  for  war. 


BUTTONS 

I  HAVE  been  watching  the  war  map  slammed  up  for 
advertising  in  front  of  the  newspaper  office. 

Buttons — red  and  yellow  buttons — blue  and  black  but 
tons — are  shoved  back  and  forth  across  the  map. 

A  laughing  young  man,  sunny  with  freckles, 
Climbs  a  ladder,  yells  a  joke  to  somebody  in  the  crowd, 
And  then  fixes  a  yellow  button  one  inch  west 
And  follows  the  yellow  button  with  a  black  button  one 
inch  west. 

(Ten  thousand  men  and  boys  twist  on  their  bodies  in 
a  red  soak  along  a  river  edge, 

Gasping  of  wounds,  calling  for  water,  some  rattling 
death  in  their  throats.) 

Who  would  guess  what  it  cost  to  move  two  buttons  one 
inch  on  the  war  map  here  in  front  of  the  newspaper 
office  where  the  freckle-faced  young  man  is  laugh 
ing  to  us? 


92 


AND   THEY   OBEY 

SMASH  down  the  cities. 

Knock  the  walls  to  pieces. 

Break  the  factories  and  cathedrals,  warehouses 

and  homes 
Into  loose  piles  of  stone  and  lumber  and  black 

burnt  wood : 

You  are  the  soldiers  and  we  command  you. 

Build  up  the  cities. 

Set  up  the  walls  again. 

Put  together  once  more  the  factories  and  cathe 
drals,  warehouses  and  homes 

Into  buildings  for  life  and  labor : 

You  are   workmen   and  citizens  all:    We 
command  you. 


93 


JAWS 

SEVEN  nations  stood  with  their  hands  on  the  jaws  of 

death. 

It  was  the  first  week  in  August,  Nineteen  Hundred  Four 
teen. 
I  was  listening,  you  were  listening,  the  whole  world  was 

listening, 

And  all  of  us  heard  a  Voice  murmuring : 
"  I  am  the  way  and  the  light, 
He  that  believeth  on  me 
Shall  not  perish 

But  shall  have  everlasting  life." 
Seven  nations  listening  heard  the  Voice  and  answered : 

"O  Hell!" 

The  jaws  of  death  began  clicking  and  they  go  on  click 
ing: 

"O  Hell!" 


94 


SALVAGE 

GUNS  on  the  battle  lines  have  pounded  now  a  year  be 
tween  Brussels  and  Paris. 

And,  William  Morris,  when  I  read  your  old  chapter  on 
the  great  arches  and  naves  and  little  whimsical  cor 
ners  of  the  Churches  of  Northern  France — Brr-rr! 

I'm  glad  you're  a  dead  man,  William  Morris,  I'm  glad 
you're  down  in  the  damp  and  mouldy,  only  a  memory 
instead  of  a  living  man — I'm  glad  you're  gone. 

You  never  lied  to  us,  William  Morris,  you  loved  the 
shape  of  those  stones  piled  and  carved  for  you  to 
dream  over  and  wonder  because  workmen  got  joy 
of  life  into  them, 

Workmen  in  aprons  singing  while  they  hammered,  and 
praying,  and  putting  their  songs  and  prayers  into 
the  walls  and  roofs,  the  bastions  and  cornerstones 
and  gargoyles — all  their  children  and  kisses  of 
women  and  wheat  and  roses  growing. 

I  say,  William  Morris,  I'm  glad  you're  gone,  I'm  glad 
you're  a  dead  man. 

Guns  on  the  battle  lines  have  pounded  a  year  now  be 
tween  Brussels  and  Paris. 


95 


WARS 

IN  the  old  wars  drum  of  hoofs  and  the  beat  of  shod  feet. 
In  the  new  wars  hum  of  motors  and  the  tread  of  rubber 

tires. 
In  the  wars  to  come  silent  wheels  and  whirr  of  rods  not 

yet  dreamed  out  in  the  heads  of  men. 

In  the  old  wars  clutches  of  short  swords  and  jabs  into 

faces  with  spears. 
In  the  new  wars  long  range  guns  and  smashed  walls,  guns 

running  a  spit  of  metal  and  men  falling  in  tens  and 

twenties. 
In  the  wars  to  come  new  silent  deaths,  new  silent  hurlers 

not  yet  dreamed  out  in  the  heads  of  men. 

In  the  old  wars  kings  quarreling  and  thousands  of  men 

following. 
In  the  new  wars  kings  quarreling  and  millions  of  men 

following. 
In  the  wars  to  come  kings  kicked  under  the  dust  and 

millions    of    men    following   great    causes    not   yet 

dreamed  out  in  the  heads  of  men. 


THE    ROAD    AND    THE  END 


THE    ROAD   AND   THE    END 

I  SHALL  foot  it 

Down  the  roadway  in  the  dusk, 
Where  shapes  of  hunger  wander 
And  the  fugitives  of  pain  go*  by. 
I  shall  foot  it 

In  the  silence  of  the  morning, 
See  the  night  slur  into  dawn, 
Hear  the  slow  great  winds  arise 
Where  tall  trees  flank  the  way 
And  shoulder  toward  the  sky. 

The  broken  boulders  by  the  road 
Shall  not  commemorate  my  ruin. 
Regret  shall  be  the  gravel  under  foot. 
I  shall  watch  for 
Slim  birds  swift  of  wing 
.That  go  where  wind  and  ranks  of  thunder 
Drive  the  wild  processionals  of  rain. 

The  dust  of  the  traveled  road 
Shall  touch  my  hands  and  face. 


CHOICES 

THEY  offer  you  many  things, 

I  a  few. 

Moonlight  on  the  play  of  fountains  at  night 
With  water  sparkling  a  drowsy  monotone, 
Bare-shouldered,  smiling  women  and  talk 
And  a  cross-play  of  loves  and  adulteries 
And  a  fear  of  death 

and  a  remembering  of  regrets 
All  this  they  offer  you. 
I  come  with: 

salt  and  bread 

a  terrible  job  of  work 

and  tireless  war; 
Come  and  have  now: 

hunger. 

danger 

and  hate. 


100 


GRAVES 

I  DREAMED  one  man  stood  against  a  thousand, 
One  man  damned  as  a  wrongheaded  fool. 
One  year  and  another  he  walked  the  streets, 
And  a  thousand  shrugs  and  hoots 
Met  him  in  the  shoulders  and  mouths  he  passed. 

He  died  alone 
And  only  the  undertaker  came  to  his  funeral. 

Flowers  grow  over  his  grave  anod  in  the  wind, 
And  over  the  graves  of  the  thousand,  too, 
The  flowers  grow  anod  in  the  wind. 

Flowers  and  the  wind, 
Flowers  anod  over  the  graves  of  the  dead, 
Petals  of  red,  leaves  of  yellow,  streaks  of  white, 
Masses  of  purple  sagging  .  .  . 
I  love  you  and  your  great  way  of  forgetting. 


101 


AZTEC   MASK 

I  WANTED  a  man's  face  looking  into  the  jaws  and  throat 

of  life 
With  something  proud  on  his  face,  so  proud  no  smash 

of  the  jaws, 

No  gulp  of  the  throat  leaves  the  face  in  the  end 
With  anything  else  than  the  old  proud  look : 

Even  to  the  finish,  dumped  in  the  dust, 

Lost  among  the  used-up  cinders, 

This  face,  men  would  say,  is  a  flash, 

Is  laid  on  bones  taken  from  the  ribs  of  the  earth, 

Ready  for  the  hammers  of  changing,  changing 

years, 

Ready  for  the  sleeping,  sleeping  years  of  silence. 
Ready  for  the  dust  and  fire  and  wind. 
I  wanted  this  face  and  I  saw  it  today  in  an  Aztec  mask. 
A  cry  out  of  storm  and  dark,  a  red  yell  and  a  purple 

prayer, 
A  beaten  shape  of  ashes 

waiting  the  sunrise  or  night, 
something  or  nothing, 
proud-mouthed, 
proud-eyed  gambler. 


102 


MOMUS 

MOMUS  is  the  name  men  give  your  face, 
The  brag  of  its  tone,  like  a  long  low  steamboat  whistle 
Finding  a  way  mid  mist  on  a  shoreland, 
Where  gray  rocks  let  the  salt  water  shatter  spray 
Against  horizons  purple,  silent. 

Yes,  Momus, 

Men  have  flung  your  face  in  bronze 

To  gaze  in  gargoyle  downward  on  a  street-whirl  of  folk. 

They  were  artists  did  this,  shaped  your  sad  mouth, 

Gave  you  a  tall  forehead  slanted  with  calm,  broad  wis 
dom; 

All  your  lips  to  the  corners  and  your  cheeks  to  the  high 
bones 

Thrown  over  and  through  with  a  smile  that  forever 
wishes  and  wishes,  purple,  silent,  fled  from  all  the 
iron  things  of  life,  evaded  like  a  sought  bandit,  gone 
into  dreams,  by  God. 

I  wonder,  Momus, 

Whether  shadows  of  the  dead  sit  somewhere  and  look 

with  deep  laughter 
On  men  who  play  in  terrible  earnest  the  old,  known, 

solemn  repetitions  of  history. 
103 


IO4  The  Road  and  the  End 

A  droning  monotone  soft  as  sea  laughter  hovers  from 

your  kindliness  of  bronze, 
You  give  me  the  human  ease  of  a  mountain  peak,  purple, 

silent ; 

Granite  shoulders  heaving  above  the  earth  curves, 
Careless  eye-witness  of  the  spawning  tides  of  men  and 

women 
Swarming  always  in  a  drift  of  millions  to  the  dust  of  toil, 

the  salt  of  tears, 
And  blood  drops  of  undiminishing  war. 


THE   ANSWER 

You  have  spoken  the  answer. 
A  child  searches  far  sometimes 
Into  the  red  dust 

On  a  dark  rose  leaf 
And  so  you  have  gone  far 

For  the  answer  is : 
Silence. 

In  the  republic 
Of  the  winking  stars 

and  spent  cataclysms 
Sure  we  are  it  is  off  there  the  answer 

is  hidden  and  folded  over, 
Sleeping  in  the  sun,  careless  whether 
it  is  Sunday  or  any  other  day  of 
the  week, 

Knowing  silence  will  bring  all  one  way 
or  another. 

Have  we  not  seen 
Purple  of  the  pansy 

out  of  the  mulch 

and  mold 

crawl 

105 


106  The  Road  and  the  End 

into  a  dusk 
of  velvet? 
blur  of  yellow? 

Almost  we  thought  from  nowhere  but  it  was 
the  silence, 
the  future, 
working. 


TO   A   DEAD   MAN 

OVER  the  dead  line  we  have  called  to  you 
To  come  across  with  a  word  to  us, 
Some  beaten  whisper  of  what  happens 
Where  you  are  over  the  dead  line 
Deaf  to  our  calls  and  voiceless. 

The  flickering  shadows  have  not  answered 
Nor  your  lips  sent  a  signal 
Whether  love  talks  and  roses  grow 
And  the  sun  breaks  at  morning 
Splattering  the  sea  with  crimson. 


107 


UNDER 


I  AM  the  undertow 
Washing  tides  of  power 
Battering  the  pillars 
Under  your  things  of  high  law. 

ii 

I  am  a  sleepless 

Slowfaring  eater, 

Maker  of  rust  and  rot 

In  your  bastioned  fastenings, 

Caissons  deep. 

in 

I  am  the  Law 
Older  than  you 
And  your  builders  proud. 

I  am  deaf 

In  all  days 

Whether  you 

Say  "  Yes  "  or  "  No  ". 

I  am  the  crumbier: 
To-morrow. 
108 


A   SPHINX 

CLOSE-MOUTHED  you  sat  five  thousand  years  and  never 

let  out  a  whisper. 
Processions   came   by,   marchers,  asking  questions   you 

answered  with  grey  eyes  never  blinking,  shut  lips 

never  talking. 
Not  one  croak  of  anything  you  know  has  come  from  your 

cat  crouch  of  ages. 
I  am  one  of  those  who  know  all  you  know  and  I  keep  my 

questions :    I  know  the  answers  you  hold. 


109 


WHO   AM   I? 

MY  head  knocks  against  the  stars. 

My  feet  are  on  the  hilltops. 

My  finger-tips  are  in  the  valleys  and  shores  of 

universal  life. 
Down  in  the  sounding  foam  of  primal  things  I 

reach  my  hands  and  play  with  pebbles  of 

destiny. 

I  have  been  to  hell  and  back  many  times. 
I  know  all  about  heaven,  for  I  have  talked  with 

God. 

I  dabble  in  the  blood  and  guts  of  the  terrible. 
I  know  the  passionate  seizure  of  beauty 
And  the  marvelous  rebellion  of  man  at  all  signs 

reading  "  Keep  Off." 

My  name  is  Truth  and  I  am  the  most  elusive  cap 
tive  in  the  universe. 


no 


OUR   PRAYER   OF  THANKS 

FOR  the  gladness  here  where  the  sun  is  shining  at  even 
ing  on  the  weeds  at  the  river, 
Our  prayer  of  thanks. 

For  the  laughter  of  children  who  tumble  barefooted  and 

bareheaded  in  the  summer  grass, 
Our  prayer  of  thanks. 

For  the  sunset  and  the  stars,  the  women  and  the  white 

arms  that  hold  us, 
Our  prayer  of  thanks. 

God, 

If  you  are  deaf  and  blind,  if  this  is  all  lost  to  you, 
God,  if  the  dead  in  their  coffins  amid  the  silver  handles 
on  the  edge  of  town,  or  the  reckless  dead  of  war 
days  thrown  unknown  in  pits,  if  these  dead  are  for 
ever  deaf  and  blind  and  lost, 
Our  prayer  of  thanks. 

God, 

The  game  is  all  your  way,  the  secrets  and  the  signals  and 
the  system;  and  so  for  the  break  of  the  game  and 
the  first  play  and  the  last. 
Our  prayer  of  thanks. 

in 


FOGS  AND  FIRES 


AT  A  WINDOW 

GIVE  me  hunger, 

O  you  gods  that  sit  and  give 

The  world  its  orders. 

Give  me  hunger,  pain  and  want, 

Shut  me  out  with  shame  and  failure 

From  your  doors  of  gold  and  fame, 

Give  me  your  shabbiest,  weariest  hunger! 

But  leave  me  a  little  love, 

A  voice  to  speak  to  me  in  the  day  end, 

A  hand  to  touch  me  in  the  dark  room 

Breaking  the  long  loneliness. 

In  the  dusk  of  day-shapes 

Blurring  the  sunset, 

One  little  wandering,  western  star 

Thrust  out  from  the  changing  shores  of  shadow. 

Let  me  go  to  the  window, 

Watch  there  the  day-shapes  of  dusk 

And  wait  and  know  the  coming 

Of  a  little  love. 


UNDER   THE    HARVEST   MOON 

UNDER  the  harvest  moon, 
When  the  soft  silver 
Drips  shimmering 
Over  the  garden  nights, 
Death,  the  gray  mocker, 
Comes  and  whispers  to  you 
As  a  beautiful  friend 
Who  remembers. 

Under  the  summer  roses 
When  the  flagrant  crimson 
Lurks  in  the  dusk 
Of  the  wild  red  leaves, 
Love,  with  little  hands, 
Comes  and  touches  you 
With  a  thousand  memories, 
And  asks  you 
Beautiful,  unanswerable  questions. 


116 


THE   GREAT   HUNT 

I  CANNOT  tell  you  now ; 

When  the  wind's  drive  and  whirl 

Blow  me  along  no  longer, 

And  the  wind's  a  whisper  at  last — 

Maybe  I'll  tell  you  then — 

some  other  time. 

When  the  rose's  flash  to  the  sunset 
Reels  to  the  rack  and  the  twist, 
And  the  rose  is  a  red  bygone, 
When  the  face  I  love  is  going 
And  the  gate  to  the  end  shall  clang, 
And  it's  no  use  to  beckon  or  say,  "  So  long  "- 
Maybe  I'll  tell  you  then — 

some  other  time. 

I  never  knew  any  more  beautiful  than  you : 
I  have  hunted  you  under  my  thoughts, 
I  have  broken  down  under  the  wind 
And  into  the  roses  looking  for  you. 
I  shall  never  find  any 

greater  than  you. 


117 


MONOTONE 

THE  monotone  of  the  rain  is  beautiful, 
And  the  sudden  rise  and  slow  relapse 
Of  the  long  multitudinous  rain. 

The  sun  on  the  hills  is  beautiful, 
Or  a  captured  sunset  sea-flung, 
Bannered  with  fire  and  gold. 

A  face  I  know  is  beautiful — 
With  fire  and  gold  of  sky  and  sea, 
And  the  peace  of  long  warm  rain. 


JOY 

LET  a  joy  keep  you. 
Reach  out  your  hands 
And  take  it  when  it  runs  by, 
As  the  Apache  dancer 
Clutches  his  woman. 
I  have  seen  them 
Live  long  and  laugh  loud, 
Sent  on  singing,  singing, 
Smashed  to  the  heart 
Under  the  ribs 
With  a  terrible  love. 
Joy  always, 
Joy  everywhere — 
Let  joy  kill  you! 
Keep  away  from  the  little  deaths. 


119 


SHIRT 

I  REMEMBER  once  I  ran  after  you  and  tagged  the  flutter 
ing  shirt  of  you  in  the  wind. 

Once  many  days  ago  I  drank  a  glassful  of  something  and 
the  picture  of  you  shivered  and  slid  on  top  of  the 
stuff. 

And  again  it  was  nobody  else  but  you  I  heard  in  the 
singing  voice  of  a  careless  humming  woman. 

One  night  when  I  sat  with  chums  telling  stories  at  a 
bonfire  flickering  red  embers,  in  a  language  its  own 
talking  to  a  spread  of  white  stars : 

It  was  you  that  slunk  laughing 
in  the  clumsy  staggering  shadows. 

Broken  answers  of  remembrance  let  me  know  you  are 
alive  with  a  peering  phantom  face  behind  a  doorway 
somewhere  in  the  city's  push  and  fury 

Or  under  a  pack  of  moss  and  leaves  waiting  in  silence 
under  a  twist  of  oaken  arms  ready  as  ever  to  run 
away  again  when  I  tag  the  fluttering  shirt  of  you. 


120 


AZTEC 

You  came  from  the  Aztecs 
With  a  copper  on  your  fore-arms 
Tawnier  than  a  sunset 
Saying  good-by  to  an  even  river. 

And  I  said,  you  remember, 
Those  fore-arms  of  yours 
Were  finer  than  bronzes 
And  you  were  glad. 

It  was  tears 
And  a  path  west 

and  a  home-going 

when  I  asked 

Why  there  were  scars  of  worn  gold 
Where  a  man's  ring  was  fixed  once 
On  your  third  finger. 

And  I  call  you 
To  come  back 

before  the  days  are  longer. 


121 


TWO 

MEMORY  of  you  is  ...  a  blue  spear  of  flower. 
I  cannot  remember  the  name  of  it. 
Alongside  a  bold  dripping  poppy  is  fire  and  silk. 

And  they  cover  you. 


122 


BACK  YARD 

SHINE  on,  O  moon  of  summer. 

Shine  to  the  leaves  of  grass,  catalpa  and  oak, 

All  silver  under  your  rain  to-night. 

An  Italian  boy  is  sending  songs  to  you  to-night  from  an 

accordion. 
A  Polish  boy  is  out  with  his  best  girl;  they  many  next 

month ;  to-night  they  are  throwing  you  kisses. 

An  old  man  next  door  is  dreaming  over  a  sheen  that  sits 
in  a  cherry  tree  in  his  back  yard. 

The  clocks  say  I  must  go — I  stay  here  sitting  on  the 
back  porch  drinking  white  thoughts  you  rain  down. 

Shine  on,  O  moon, 
Shake  out  more  and  more  silver  changes. 


123 


ON   THE   BREAKWATER 

ON  the  breakwater  in  the  summer  dark,  a  man  and  a 

girl  are  sitting, 

She  across  his  knee  and  they  are  looking  face  into  face 
Talking  to  each  other  without  words,  singing  rythms  in 

silence  to  each  other. 

A  funnel  of  white  ranges  the  blue  dusk  from  an  out 
going  boat, 

Playing  its  searchlight,  puzzled,  abrupt,  over  a  streak  of 
green, 

And  two  on  the  breakwater  keep  their  silence,  she  on  his 
knee. 


124 


MASK 

FLING  your  red  scarf  faster  and  faster,  dancer. 

It  is  summer  and  the  sun  loves  a  million  green  leaves, 

masses  of  green. 

Your  red  scarf  flashes  across  them  calling  and  a-calling. 
The  silk  and  flare  of  it  is  a  great  soprano  leading  a 

chorus 
Carried  along  in  a  rouse  of  voices  reaching  for  the  heart 

of  the  world. 
Your  toes  are  singing  to  meet  the  song  of  your  arms : 

Let  the  red  scarf  go  swifter. 
Summer  and  the  sun  command  you. 


PEARL   FOG 

OPEN  the  door  now. 
Go  roll  up  the  collar  of  your  coat 
To  walk  in  the  changing  scarf  of  mist. 

Tell  your  sins  here  to  the  pearl  fog 
And  know  for  once  a  deepening  night 
Strange  as  the  half-meanings 
Alurk  in  a  wise  woman's  mousey  eyes. 

Yes,  tell  your  sins 

And  know  how  careless  a  pearl  fog  is 
Of  the  laws  you  have  broken. 


126 


I   SANG 

I  SANG  to  you  and  the  moon 
But  only  the  moon  remembers. 

I  sang 
O  reckless  free-hearted 

free-throated  rythms, 
Even  the  moon  remembers  them 

And  is  kind  to  me. 


137 


FOLLIES 

SHAKEN, 
The  blossoms  of  lilac, 

And  shattered, 
The  atoms  of  purple. 
Green  dip  the  leaves, 

Darker  the  bark, 
Longer  the  shadows. 

Sheer  lines  of  poplar 
.Shimmer  with  masses  of  silver 
And  down  in  a  garden  old  with  years 
And  broken  walls  of  ruin  and  story, 
Roses  rise  with  red  rain-memories. 
May! 

In  the  open  world 
The  sun  comes  and  finds  your  face, 

Remembering  all. 


128 


JUNE 

PAULA  is  digging  and  shaping  the  loam  of  a  salvia, 

Scarlet  Chinese  talker  of  summer. 
Two  petals  of  crabapple  blossom  blow  fallen  in  Paula's 
hair, 

And  fluff  of  white  from  a  cottonwood. 


129 


NOCTURNE   IN   A   DESERTED 
BRICKYARD 

STUFF  of  the  moon 
Runs  on  the  lapping  sand 
Out  to  the  longest  shadows. 
Under  the  curving  willows, 
And  round  the  creep  of  the  wave  line, 
Fluxions  of  yellow  and  dusk  on  the  waters 
Make  a  wide  dreaming  pansy  of  an  old  pond  in  the  night. 


130 


HYDRANGEAS 

DRAGOONS,  I  tell  you  the  white  hydrangeas 

turn  rust  and  go  soon. 
Already  mid  September  a  line  of  brown  runs 

over  them. 
One  sunset  after  another  tracks  the  faces,  the 

petals. 
Waiting,  they  look  over  the  fence  for  what 

way  they  go. 


131 


THEME   IN   YELLOW 

I  SPOT  the  hills 

With  yellow  balls  in  autumn. 

I  light  the  prairie  cornfields 

Orange  and  tawny  gold  clusters 

And  I  am  called  pumpkins. 

On  the  last  of  October 

When  dusk  is  fallen 

Children  join  hands 

And  circle  round  me 

Singing  ghost  songs 

And  love  to  the  harvest  moon ; 

I  am  a  jack-o'-lantern 

With  terrible  teeth 

And  the  children  know 

I  am  fooling. 


132 


BETWEEN   TWO   HILLS 

BETWEEN  two  hills 
The  old  town  stands. 
The  houses  loom 
And  the  roofs  and  trees 
And  the  dusk  and  the  dark, 
The  damp  and  the  dew 
Are  there. 

The  prayers  are  said 
And  the  people  rest 
For  sleep  is  there 
And  the  touch  of  dreams 
Is  over  all. 


133 


LAST  ANSWERS 

I  WROTE  a  poem  on  the  mist 

And  a  woman  asked  me  what  I  meant  by  it. 

I  had  thought  till  then  only  of  the  beauty  of  the  mist, 
how  pearl  and  gray  of  it  mix  and  reel, 

And  change  the  drab  shanties  with  lighted  lamps  at  even 
ing  into  points  of  mystery  quivering  with  color. 

I  answered : 
The  whole  world  was  mist  once  long  ago  and  some  day 

it  will  all  go  back  to  mist, 
Our  skulls  and  lungs  are  more  water  than  bone  and 

tissue 
And  all  poets  love  dust  and  mist  because  all  the  last 

answers 
Go  running  back  to  dust  and  mist. 


134 


WINDOW 

NIGHT  from  a  railroad  car  window 
Is  a  great,  dark,  soft  thing 
Broken  across  with  slashes  of  light. 


i35 


YOUNG   SEA 

THE  sea  is  never  still. 
It  pounds  on  the  shore 
Restless  as  a  young  heart, 
Hunting. 

The  sea  speaks 

And  only  the  stormy  hearts 

Know  what  it  says : 

It  is  the  face 

of  a  rough  mother  speaking. 

The  sea  is  young. 

One  storm  cleans  all  the  hoar 

And  loosens  the  age  of  it. 

I  hear  it  laughing,  reckless. 

They  love  the  sea, 
Men  who  ride  on  it 
And  know  they  will  die 
Under  the  salt  of  it 

Let  only  the  young  come, 
Says  the  sea. 
136 


Young  Sea  137 

Let  them  kiss  my  face 

And  hear  me. 
I  am  the  last  word 

And  I  tell 
Where  storms  and  stars  come  from. 


BONES 

SLING  me  under  the  sea. 
Pack  me  down  in  the  salt  and  wet. 
No  farmer's  plow  shall  touch  my  bones. 
No  Hamlet  hold  my  jaws  and  speak 
How  jokes  are  gone  and  empty  is  my  mouth. 
Long,  green-eyed  scavengers  shall  pick  my  eyes, 
Purple  fish  play  hide-and-seek, 
And  I  shall  be  song  of  thunder,  crash  of  sea, 
Down  on  the  floors  of  salt  and  wet. 
Sling  me  .  .  .  under  the  sea. 


138 


PALS 

TAKE  a  hold  now 

On  the  silver  handles  here, 

Six  silver  handles, 

One  for  each  of  his  old  pals. 

Take  hold 

And  lift  him  down  the  stairs, 
Put  him  on  the  rollers 
Over  the  floor  of  the  hearse. 

Take  him  on  the  last  haul, 
To  the  cold  straight  house, 
The  level  even  house, 
To  the  last  house  of  all. 

The  dead  say  nothing 

And  the  dead  know  much 

And  the  dead  hold  under  their  tongues 

A  locked-up  story. 


139 


CHILD 

THE  young  child,  Christ,  is  straight  and  wise 
And  asks  questions  of  the  old  men,  questions 
Found  under  running  water  for  all  children 
And  found  under  shadows  thrown  on  still  waters 
By  tall  trees  looking  downward,  old  and  gnarled. 
Found  to  the  eyes  of  children  alone,  untold, 
Singing  a  low  song  in  the  loneliness. 
And  the  young  child,  Christ,  goes  on  asking 
And  the  old  men  answer  nothing  and  only  know  love 
For  the  young  child.  Christ,  -etraight  and  wise. 


140 


POPPIES 

SHE  loves  blood-red  poppies  for  a  garden  to  walk  in. 
In  a  loose  white  gown  she  walks 

and  a  new  child  tugs  at  cords  in  her  body. 
Her  head  to  the  west  at  evening  when  the  dew  is  creep 
ing, 

A  shudder  of  gladness  runs  in  her  bones  and  torsal  fiber: 
She  loves  blood-red  poppies  for  a  garden  to  walk  in. 


141 


CHILD  MOON 

THE  child's  wonder 

At  the  old  moon 

Comes  back  nightly. 

She  points  her  finger 

To  the  far  silent  yellow  thing 

Shining  through  the  branches 

Filtering  on  the  leaves  a  golden  sand, 

Crying  with  her  little  tongue,  "  See  the  moon !  " 

And  in  her  bed  fading  to  sleep 

With  babblings  of  the  moon  on  her  little  mouth. 


142 


MARGARET 

MANY  birds  and  the  beating  of  wings 

Make  a  flinging  reckless  hum 

In  the  early  morning  at  the  rocks 

Above  the  blue  pool 

Where  the  gray  shadows  swim  lazy. 

In  your  blue  eyes,  O  reckless  child, 
I  saw  today  many  little  wild  wishes, 
Eager  as  the  great  morning. 


143 


SHADOWS 


POEMS    DONE    ON   A   LATE    NIGHT   CAR 

I.      CHICKENS 

I  AM  The  Great  White  Way  of  the  city : 
When  you  ask  what  is  my  desire,  I  answer : 
•"  Girls  fresh  as  country  wild  flowers, 
With  young  faces  tired  of  the  cows  and  barns, 
Eager  in  their  eyes  as  the  dawn  to  find  my  mysteries, 
Slender  supple  girls  with  shapely  legs, 
Lure  in  the  arch  of  their  little  shoulders 
And  wisdom  from  the  prairies  to  cry  only  softly  at 
the  ashes  of  my  mysteries." 


147 


II.      USED    UP 

Lines  based  on  certain  regrets  that  come  with  rumina 
tion  upon  the  painted  faces  of  women  on 
North  Clark  Street,  Chicago 

Roses, 
Red  roses, 

Crushed 

In  the  rain  and  wind 
Like  mouths  of  women 
Beaten  by  the  fists  of 
Men  using  them. 
O  little  roses 
And  broken  leaves 
And  petal  wisps : 
You  that  so  flung  your  crimson 

To  the  sun 
Only  yesterday. 


148 


III.      HOME 


Here  is  a  thing  my  heart  wishes  the  world  had  more  of : 
I  heard  it  in  the  air  of  one  night  when  I  listened 
To  a  mother  singing  softly  to  a  child  restless  and  angry 
in  the  darkness. 


149 


IT   IS    MUCH 

WOMEN  of  night  life  amid  the  lights 
Where  the  line  of  your  full,  round  throats 
Matches  in  gleam  the  glint  of  your  eyes 
And  the  ring  of  your  heart-deep  laughter : 
It  is  much  to  be  warm  and  sure  of  to-morrow. 

Women  of  night  life  along  the  shadows, 
Lean  at  your  throats  and  skulking  the  walls, 
Gaunt  as  a  bitch  worn  to  the  bone, 
Under  the  paint  of  your  smiling  faces : 

It  is  much  to  be  warm  and  sure  of  to-morrow. 


150 


TRAFFICKER 

AMONG  the  shadows  where  two  streets  cross, 

A  woman  lurks  in  the  dark  and  waits 

To  move  on  when  a  policeman  heaves  in  view. 

Smiling  a  broken  smile  from  a  face 

Painted  over  haggard  bones  and  desperate  eyes, 

All  night  she  offers  passers-by  what  they  will 

Of  her  beauty  wasted,  body  faded,  claims  gone, 

And  no  takers. 


151 


HARRISON  STREET  COURT 

I  HEARD  a  woman's  lips 
Speaking  to  a  companion 
Say  these  words : 

"  A  woman  what  hustles 

Never  keeps  nothin' 

For  all  her  hustlin'. 

Somebody  always  gets 

What  she  goes  on  the  street  for. 

If  it  ain't  a  pimp 

It's  a  bull  what  gets  it. 

I  been  hustlin'  now 

Till  I  ain't  much  good  any  more. 

I  got  nothin'  to  show  for  it. 

Some  man  got  it  all, 

Every  night's  hustlin'  I  ever  did." 


152 


SOILED    DOVE 

LET  us  be  honest ;  the  lady  was  not  a  harlot  until  she 
married  a  corporation  lawyer  who  picked  her  from 
a  Ziegfeld  chorus. 

Before  then  she  never  took  anybody's  money  and  paid 
for  her  silk  stockings  out  of  what  she  earned  singing 
and  dancing. 

She  loved  one  man  and  he  loved  six  women  and  the 
game  was  changing  her  looks,  calling  for  more  and 
more  massage  money  and  high  coin  for  the  beauty 
doctors. 

Now  she  drives  a  long,  underslung  motor  car  all  by  her 
self,  reads  in  the  day's  papers  what  her  husband  is 
doing  to  the  inter-state  commerce  commission,  re 
quires  a  larger  corsage  from  year  to  year,  and  won 
ders  sometimes  how  one  man  is  coming  along  with 
six  women. 


153 


JUNGHEIMER'S 

IN  western  fields  of  corn  and  northern  timber  lands, 
They  talk  about  me,  a  saloon  with  a  soul, 
The  soft  red  lights,  the  long  curving  bar, 
The  leather  seats  and  dim  corners, 
Tall  brass  spittoons,  a  nigger  cutting  ham, 

And  the  painting  of  a  woman  half-dressed  thrown  reck 
less  across  a  bed  after  a  night  of  booze  and  riots. 


154 


ft 


GONE 

EVERYBODY  loved  Chick  Lorimer  in  our  town. 

Far  off 

Everybody  loved  her. 
So  we  all  love  a  wild  girl  keeping  a  hold 

On  a  dream  she  wants. 

Nobody  knows  now  where  Chick  Lorimer  went. 
Nobody  knows  why  she  packed  her  trunk  .  .  a  few 

old  things 
And  is  gone, 

Gone  with  her  little  chin 
Thrust  ahead  of  her 
And  her  soft  hair  blowing  careless 
From  under  a  wide  hat, 
Dancer,  singer,  a  laughing  passionate  lover. 

Were  there  ten  men  or  a  hundred  hunting  Chick  ? 
Were  there  five  men  or  fifty  with  aching  hearts  ? 
Everybody  loved  Chick  Lorimer. 

Nobody  knows  where  she's  gone. 


OTHER    DAYS 

( 1900-1910) 


DREAMS    IN   THE   DUSK 

DREAMS  in  the  dusk, 

Only  dreams  closing  the  day 

And  with  the  day's  close  going  back 

To  the  gray  things,  the  dark  things, 

The  far,  deep  things  of  dreamland. 

Dreams,  only  dreams  in  the  dusk, 
Only  the  old  remembered  pictures 
Of  lost  days  when  the  day's  loss 
Wrote  in  tears  the  heart's  loss. 

Tears  and  loss  and  broken  dreams 
May  find  your  heart  at  dusk. 


DOCKS 

STROLLING  along 

By  the  teeming  docks, 

I  watch  the  ships  put  out. 

Black  ships  that  heave  and  lunge 

And  move  like  mastodons 

Arising  from  lethargic  sleep. 

The  fathomed  harbor 
Calls  them  not  nor  dares 
Them  to  a  strain  of  action, 
But  outward,  on  and  outward, 
Sounding  low-reverberating  calls, 
Shaggy  in  the  half-lit  distance, 
They  pass  the  pointed  headland, 
View  the  wide,  far-lifting  wilderness 
And  leap  with  cumulative  speed 
To  test  the  challenge  of  the  sea. 

Plunging, 

Doggedly  onward  plunging, 

Into  salt  and  mist  and  foam  and  sun. 


160 


ALL   DAY   LONG 

ALL  day  long  in  fog  and  wind, 

The  waves  have  flung  their  beating  crests 

Against  the  palisades  of  adamant. 

My  boy,  he  went  to  sea,  long  and  long  ago, 
Curls  of  brown  were  slipping  underneath  his  cap, 
He  looked  at  me  from  blue  and  steely  eyes ; 
Natty,  straight  and  true,  he  stepped  away, 
My  boy,  he  went  to  sea. 

All  day  long  in  fog  and  wind, 

The  waves  have  flung  their  beating  crests 

Against  the  palisades  of  adamant. 


161 


WAITING 

TODAY  I  will  let  the  old  boat  stand 
Where  the  sweep  of  the  harbor  tide  comes  in 
To  the  pulse  of  a  far,  deep-steady  sway. 
And  I  will  rest  and  dream  and  sit  on  the  deck 

Watching  the  world  go  by 

And  take  my  pay  for  many  hard  days  gone  I  re 
member. 

I  will  choose  what  clouds  I  like 

In  the  great  white  fleets  that  wander  the  blue 

As  I  lie  on  my  back  or  loaf  at  the  rail. 

And  I  will  listen  as  the  veering  winds  kiss  me  and 

fold  me 
And  put  on  my  brow  the  touch  of  the  world's  great 

will. 

Daybreak  will  hear  the  heart  of  the  boat  beat, 

Engine  throb  and  piston  play 
In  the  quiver  and  leap  at  call  of  life. 
To-morrow  we  move  in  the  gaps  and  heights 
On  changing  floors  of  unlevel  seas 
And  no  man  shall  stop  us  and  no  man  follow 
For  ours  is  the  quest  of  an  unknown  shore 
And  we  are  husky  and  lusty  and  shouting-gay. 

162 


FROM   THE   SHORE 

A  LONE  gray  bird, 

Dim-dipping,  far-flying, 

Alone  in  the  shadows  and  grandeurs  and  tumults 

Of  night  and  the  sea 

And  the  stars  and  storms. 

Out  over  the  darkness  it  wavers  and  hovers, 
Out  into  the  gloom  it  swings  and  batters, 
Out  into  the  wind  and  the  rain  and  the  vast, 
Out  into  the  pit  of  a  great  black  world, 
Where  fogs  are  at  battle,  sky-driven,  sea-blown, 
Love  of  mist  and  rapture  of  flight, 
Glories  of  chance  and  hazards  of  death 
On  its  eager  and  palpitant  wings. 

Out  into  the  deep  of  the  great  dark  world, 
Beyond  the  long  borders  where  foam  and  drift 
Of  the  sundering  waves  are  lost  and  gone 
On  the  tides  that  plunge  and  rear  and  crumble. 


163 


UPLANDS    IN    MAY 

WONDER  as  of  old  things 
Fresh  and  fair  come  back 
Hangs  over  pasture  and  road. 
Lush  in  the  lowland  grasses  rise 
And  upland  beckons  to  upland. 
The  great  strong  hills  are  humble. 


164 


DREAM  GIRL 

You  will  come  one  day  in  a  waver  of  love, 

Tender  as  dew,  impetuous  as  rain, 

The  tan  of  the  sun  will  be  on  your  skin, 

The  purr  of  the  breeze  in  your  murmuring  speech, 

You  will  pose  with  a  hill-flower  grace. 

You  will  come,  with  your  slim,  expressive  arms, 
A  poise  of  the  head  no  sculptor  has  caught 
And  nuances  spoken  with  shoulder  and  neck, 
Your  face  in  a  pass-and-repass  of  moods 
As  many  as  skies  in  delicate  change 
Of  cloud  and  blue  and  flimmering  sun. 

Yet, 

You  may  not  come,  O  girl  of  a  dream, 
We  may  but  pass  as  the  world  goes  by 
And  take  from  a  look  of  eyes  into  eyes, 
A  film  of  hope  and  a  memoried  day. 


165 


PLOWBOY 

AFTER  the  last  red  sunset  glimmer, 

Black  on  the  line  of  a  low  hill  rise, 

Formed  into  moving  shadows,  I  saw 

A  plowboy  and  two  horses  lined  against  the 

gray, 

Plowing  in  the  dusk  the  last  furrow. 
The  turf  had  a  gleam  of  brown, 
And  smell  of  soil  was  in  the  air, 
And,  cool  and  moist,  a  haze  of  April. 

I  shall  remember  you  long, 

Plowboy  and  horses  against  the  sky  in  shadow. 

I  shall  remember  you  and  the  picture 

You  made  for  me, 

Turning  the  turf  in  the  dusk 

And  haze  of  an  April  gloaming. 


166 


BROADWAY 

I  SHALL  never  forget  you,  Broadway 
Your  golden  and  calling  lights. 

I'll  remember  you  long, 
Tall-walled  river  of  rush  and  play. 

Hearts  that  know  you  hate  you 

And  lips  that  have  given  you  laughter 

Have  gone  to  their  ashes  of  life  and  its  roses, 

Cursing  the  dreams  that  were  lost 

In  the  dust  of  your  harsh  and  trampled  stones. 


167 


OLD  WOMAN 

THE  owl-car  clatters  along,  dogged  by  the  echo 

From  building  and  battered  paving-stone; 

The  headlight  scoffs  at  the  mist 

And  fixes  its  yellow  rays  in  the  cold  slow  rain; 

Against  a  pane  I  press  my  forehead 

And  drowsily  look  on  the  walls  and  sidewalks. 

The  headlight  finds  the  way 

And  life  is  gone  from  the  wet  and  the  welter — 

Only  an  old  woman,  bloated,  disheveled  and  bleared. 

Far-wandered  waif  of  other  days, 

Huddles  for  sleep  in  a  doorway, 

Homeless. 


168 


NOON  HOUR 

SHE  sits  in  the  dust  at  the  walls 

And  makes  cigars, 
Bending  at  the  bench 
With  fingers  wage-anxious, 
Changing  her  sweat  for  the  day's  pay. 

Now  the  noon  hour  has  come, 
And  she  leans  with  her  bare  arms 
On  the  window-sill  over  the  river, 
Leans  and  feels  at  her  throat 
Cool-moving  things  out  of  the  free  open  ways 

At  her  throat  and  eyes  and  nostrils 

The  touch  and  the  blowing  cool 

Of  great  free  ways  beyond  the  walls. 


169 


'BOES 

I  WAITED  today  for  a  freight  train  to  pass. 

Cattle  cars  with  steers  butting  their  horns  againsi  the 

bars,  went  by. 
And  a  half  a  dozen  hoboes  stood  on  bumpers  between 

cars. 

Well,  the  cattle  are  respectable,  I  thought. 
Every  steer  has  its  transportation  paid  for  by  the  farmer 

sending  it  to  market, 
While  the  hoboes  are  law-breakers  in  riding  a  railroad 

train  without  a  ticket. 
It  reminded  me  of  ten  days  I  spent  in  the  Allegheny 

County  jail  in  Pittsburgh. 

I  got  ten  days  even  though  I  was  a  veteran  of  the  Span 
ish-American  war. 
Cooped  in  the  same  cell  with  me  was  an  old  man,  a 

bricklayer  and  a  booze-fighter. 
But  it  just  happened  he,  too,  Was  a  veteran  soldier,  and 

he  had  fought  to  preserve  the  Union  and  free  the 

niggers. 
We  were  three  in  all,  the  other  being  a  Lithuanian  who 

got  drunk  on  pay  day  at  the  steel  works  and  got  to 

fighting  a  policeman ; 
All  the  clothes  he  had  was  a  shirt,  pants  and  shoes — 

somebody  got  his  hat  and  coat  and  what  money  he 

had  left  over  when  he  got  drunk. 
170 


UNDER  A  TELEPHONE   POLE 

I  AM  a  copper  wire  slung  in  the  air, 

Slim  against  the  sun  I  make  not  even  a  clear  line  of 
shadow. 

Night  and  day  I  keep  singing — humming  and  thrum 
ming: 

It  is  love  and  war  and  money ;  it  is  the  fighting  and  the 
tears,  the  work  and  want, 

Death  and  laughter  of  men  and  women  passing  through 
me,  carrier  of  your  speech, 

In  the  rain  and  the  wet  dripping,  in  the  dawn  and  the 
shine  drying, 

A  copper  wire. 


171 


I   AM   THE    PEOPLE,    THE    MOB 

I  AM  the  people — the  mob — the  crowd — the  mass. 

Do  you  know  that  all  the  great  work  of  the  world  is 
done  through  me? 

I  am  the  workingman,  the  inventor,  the  maker  of  the 
world's  food  and  clothes. 

I  am  the  audience  that  witnesses  history.  The  Napo 
leons  come  from  me  and  the  Lincolns.  They  die. 
And  then  I  send  forth  more  Napoleons  and  Lin 
colns. 

I  am  the  seed  ground.  I  am  a  prairie  that  will  stand 
for  much  plowing.  Terrible  storms  pass  over  me. 
I  forget.  The  best  of  me  is  sucked  out  and  wasted. 
I  forget.  Everything  but  Death  comes  to  me  and 
makes  me  work  and  give  up  what  I  have.  And  I 
forget. 

Sometimes  I  growl,  shake  myself  and  spatter  a  few  red 
drops  for  history  to  remember.  Then — I  forget. 

When  I,  the  People,  learn  to  remember,  when  I,  the 
People,  use  the  lessons  of  yesterday  and  no  longer 
forget  who  robbed  me  last  year,  who  played  me  for 
a  fool — then  there  will  be  no  speaker  in  all  the  world 
say  the  name :  "  The  People/'  with  any  fleck  of  a 
sneer  in  his  voice  or  any  far-off  smile  of  derision. 

The  mob — the  crowd — the  mass — will  arrive  then. 


172 


GOVERNMENT 

THE  Government — I  heard  about  the  Government  and 
I  went  out  to  find  it.  I  said  I  would  look  closely  at 
it  when  I  saw  it. 

Then  I  saw  a  policeman  dragging  a  drunken  man  to 
the  callaboose.  It  was  the  Government  in  action. 

I  saw  a  ward  alderman  slip  into  an  office  one  morning 
and  talk  with  a  judge.  Later  in  the  day  the  judge 
dismissed  a  case  against  a  pickpocket  who  was  a 
live  ward  worker  for  the  alderman.  Again  I  saw 
this  was  the  Government,  doing  things. 

I  saw  militiamen  level  their  rifles  at  a  crowd  of  work- 
ingmen  who  were  trying  to  get  other  workingmen 
to  stay  away  from  a  shop  where  there  was  a  strike 
on.  Government  in  action. 

Everywhere  I  saw  that  Government  is  a  thing  made  of 
men,  that  Government  has  blood  and  bones,  it  is 
many  mouths  whispering  into  many  ears,  sending 
telegrams,  aiming  rifles,  writing  orders,  saying 
"  yes  "  and  "  no." 

Government  dies  as  the  men  who  form  it  die  and  are  laid 
away  in  their  graves  and  the  new  Government  that 
comes  after  is  human,  made  of  heartbeats  of  blood, 
173 


174  Other  Days 

ambitions,  lusts,  and  money  running  through  it  all, 
money  paid  and  money  taken,  and  money  covered 
up  and  spoken  of  with  hushed  voices. 
A  Government  is  just  as  secret  and  mysterious  and  sensi 
tive  as  any  human  sinner  carrying  a  load  of  germs, 
traditions  and  corpuscles  handed  down  from 
fathers  and  mothers  away  back. 


LANGUAGES 

THERE  are  no  handles  upon  a  language 

Whereby  men  take  hold  of  it 

And  mark  it  with  signs  for  its  remembrance. 

It  is  a  river,  this  language, 

Once  in  a  thousand  years 

Breaking  a  new  course 

Changing  its  way  to  the  ocean. 

It  is  mountain  effluvia 

Moving  to  valleys 

And  from  nation  to  nation 

Crossing  borders  and  mixing. 

Languages  die  like  rivers. 

Words  wrapped  round  your  tongue  today 

And  broken  to  shape  of  thought 

Between  your  teeth  and  lips  speaking 

Now  and  today 

Shall  be  faded  hieroglyphics 

Ten  thousand  years  from  now. 

Sing — and  singing — remember 

Your  song  dies  and  changes 

And  is  not  here  to-morrow 

Any  more  than  the  wind 

Blowing  ten  thousand  years  ago. 


175 


LETTERS   TO   DEAD   IMAGISTS 

EMILY  DICKINSON  : 

You  gave  us  the  bumble  bee  who  has  a  soul, 
The  everlasting  traveler  among  the  hollyhocks, 
And  how  God  plays  around  a  back  yard  garden. 

STEVIE  CRANE: 
War  is  kind  and  we  never  knew  the  kindness  of  war  till 

you  came; 
Nor  the  black  riders  and  clashes  of  spear  and  shield  out 

of  the  sea, 
Nor  the  mumblings  and  shots  that  rise  from  dreams  on 

call. 


176 


SHEEP 

Thousands  of  sheep,  soft-footed,  black-nosed  sheep — 
one  by  one  going  up  the  hill  and  over  the  fence — one  by 
one  four-footed  pattering  up  and  over — one  by  one  wig 
gling  their  stub  tails  as  they  take  the  short  jump  and  go 
over — one  by  one  silently  unless  for  the  multitudinous 
drumming  of  their  hoofs  as  they  move  on  and  go  over — 
thousands  and  thousands  of  them  in  the  grey  haze  of 
evening  just  after  sundown — one  by  one  slanting  in  a 
long  line  to  pass  over  the  hill — 

I  am  the  slow,  long-legged  Sleepyman  and  I  love  you 
sheep  in  Persia,  California,  Argentine,  Australia,  or 
Spain— you  are  the  thoughts  that  help  me  when  I,  the 
Sleepyman,  lay  my  hands  on  the  eyelids  of  the  children 
of  the  world  at  eight  o'clock  every  night — you  thousands 
and  thousands  of  sheep  in  a  procession  of  dusk  making 
an  endless  multitudinous  drumming  on  the  hills  with 
your  hoofs. 


17? 


THE    RED    SON 

I  LOVE  your  faces  I  saw  the  many  years 
I  drank  your  milk  and  filled  my  mouth 
With  your  home  talk,  slept  in  your  house 
And  was  cne  of  you. 

But  a  fire  burns  in  my  heart. 
Under  the  ribs  where  pulses  thud 
And  flitting  between  bones  of  skull 
Is  the  push,  the  endless  mysterious  command, 

Saying : 

"  I  leave  you  behind — 

You  for  the  little  hills  and  the  years  all  alike, 
You  with  your  patient  cows  and  old  houses 
Protected  from  the  rain, 

I  am  going  away  and  I  never  come  back  to  you ; 
Crags  and  high  rough  places  call  me, 
Great  places  of  death 
Where  men  go  empty  handed 
And  pass  over  smiling 
To  the  star-drift  on  the  horizon  rim. 
My  last  whisper  shall  be  alone,  unknown; 
I  shall  go  to  the  city  and  fight  against  it, 
And  make  it  give  me  passwords 
Of  luck  and  love,  women  worth  dying  for, 
And   money. 

178 


The  Red  Son  179 

I  go  where  you  wist  not  of 

Nor  I  nor  any  man  nor  woman. 

I  only  know  I  go  to  storms 

Grappling  against  things  wet  and  naked." 
There  is  no  pity  of  it  and  no  blame. 
None  of  us  is  in  the  wrong. 
After  all  it  is  only  this : 

You  for  the  little  hills  and  I  go  away. 


THE   MIST 

I  AM  the  mist,  the  impalpable  mist, 

Back  of  the  thing  you  seek. 

My  arms  are  long, 

Long  as  the  reach  of  time  and  space. 

Some  toil  and  toil,  believing, 
Looking  now  and  again  on  my  face, 
Catching  a  vital,  olden  glory. 

But  no  one  passes  me, 

I  tangle  and  snare  them  all. 

I  am  the  cause  of  the  Sphinx, 

The  voiceless,  baffled,  patient  Sphinx. 

I  was  at  the  first  of  things, 
I  will  be  at  the  last. 

I  am  the  primal  mist 

And  no  man  passes  me ; 

My  long  impalpable  arms 

Bar  them  all. 


180 


THE   JUNK   MAN 

I  AM  glad  God  saw  Death 

And  gave  Death  a  job  taking  care  of  all  who  are  tired 
of  living: 

When  all  the  wheels  in  a  clock  are  worn  and  slow  and 

the  connections  loose 
And  the  clock  goes  on  ticking  and  telling  the  wrong  time 

from  hour  to  hour 
And  people  around  the  house  joke  about  what  a  bum 

clock  it  is, 
How  glad  the  clock  is  when  the  big  Junk  Man  drives 

his  wagon 
Up  to  the  house  and  puts  his  arms  around  the  clock  and 

says: 

"  You  don't  belong  here, 
You  gotta  come 
Along  with  me," 
How  glad  the  clock  is  then,  when  it  feels  the  arms  of  the 

Junk  Man  close  around  it  and  carry  it  away. 


181 


SILVER   NAILS 

A  MAN  was  crucified.  He  came  to  the  city  a  stranger, 
was  accused,  and  nailed  to  a  cross.  He  lingered  hang 
ing.  Laughed  at  the  crowd.  "  The  nails  are  iron,"  he 
said,  "  You  are  cheap.  In  my  country  when  we  crucify 
we  use  silver  nails  ..."  So  he  went  jeering.  They 
did  not  understand  him  at  first.  Later  they  talked  about 
him  in  changed  voices  in  the  saloons,  bowling  alleys,  and 
churches.  It  came  over  them  every  man  is  crucified 
only  once  in  his  life  and  the  law  of  humanity  dictates 
silver  nails  be  used  for  the  job.  A  statue  was  erected 
to  him  in  a  public  square.  Not  having  gathered  his 
name  when  he  was  among  them,  they  wrote  him  as  John 
Silvernail  on  the  Statue. 


182 


GYPSY 

I  ASKED  a  gypsy  pal 

To  imitate  an  old  image 

And  speak  old  wisdom. 

She  drew  in  her  chin, 

Made  her  neck  and  head 

The  top  piece  of  a  Nile  obelisk 

and  said : 

Snatch  off  the  gag  from  thy  mouth,  child, 
And  be  free  to  keep  silence. 
Tell  no  man  anything  for  no  man  listens, 
Yet  hold  thy  lips  ready  to  speak. 


183 


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